NW Soft

Always fascinated by the Mac OS X dock? Well, guess what we have more powerful dock application in Windows than Mac OS X. In windows you can customize anything you want. You get the freedom to tweak how your desktop will look like. From our previous post we have covered, using little tweaker to speed up your machine, and another Tweak utility By Totalidea Software.

Here I want to show you some of the MOST awesome Dock application that can make your Windows 7 looks even better. (Yes I mean better then Mac OS X)

Always fascinated by the Mac OS X dock? Well, guess what we have more powerful dock application in Windows than Mac OS X. In windows you can customize anything you want. You get the freedom to tweak how your desktop will look like. From our previous post we have covered, using little tweaker to speed up your machine, and another Tweak utility By Totalidea Software.

Here I want to show you some of the MOST awesome Dock application that can make your Windows 7 looks even better. (Yes I mean better then Mac OS X)

#1 Rocket Dock

Rocket Dock includes custom skins, smooth animation on launching icons. It provides a nice clean interface to drop shortcuts on for easy access and organization. With each item completely customizable there is no end to what you can add and launch from the dock.

Some of the features:
Minimize windows to the dock
Real-time window previews in Vista
Running application indicators
Simple drag-n-drop interface
Multi-monitor support
Supports alpha-blended PNG and ICO icons
Icons zoom and transition smoothly
Auto-hide and Popup on mouse over
Positioning and layering options
Fully customizable
Completely Portable
ObjectDock Docklet support
Compatible with MobyDock, ObjectDock, RK Launcher, and Y'z Dock skins
Runs great on slower computers
Unicode compliant
Supports many languages and can easily be translated
A friendly user base

#2 XWindows Dock

This basically wants to make your Dock looks and feels just exactly like the Mac OS X. It includes reflections, transparencies, shadow and blur in a single package, even less in a single free package. It also have the exact same stack and the exact same minimize animation section in Mac OS X ! XWindows Dock yet is another highly customized free Ddock Application.

Highlights and Features:
Amazing icons
Add to dock favorite applications, folders, stacks and galleries. In any time you can configure
size and zoom of icons, space between them
Number of zoomed icons
icons and their reflections
Stack the World
Try to use the 3 different types of stacks and you'll like this cool feature. Customize stack anytime as you want
Decide how the stack should be looks like: fan, grid, list and it's unique gallery mode
Select custom animation for stacks or make it by itself
Configurate number of icons in fan stacks and grid stacks
Monitor folder added as a stack. Every time when files added, removed, modified or renamed at this folder you'll see that
Minimize applications
Advanced minimization of windows were developed in the application. Now you can use two effects of minimization: Scale and Genie. You can easely customize speed of minimisation (or maximization). Set maximum speed and all windows will minimize without animation

#3 Nexus

The cool thing with Nexus is that it is a multi-level dock system provides fast access for any application that you used most frequently.

It is very easy to setup, some of the themes that build in has also included the Leopard theme. See how easy this is to tweak your Windows into a Mac Dock? To add icons, application to the dock is easy as well. Just drag into the dock and it will stick it there for you.

Unique features:
Multi-Dock System (Winstep Xtreme version only)
Multi-Level Docks (Winstep Xtreme version only)
Live icon reflections
Magnification
Auto-Hide
Auto-Collapse
Useful Object-based Drag And Drop
Full Multi-Monitor Support
Document Thumbnails
In-Dock Modules
Reserve Screen Space
Respect Reserved Screen Space
Virtual File System Objects support
Powerful Dock Manipulation options
Keyboard Navigation
PNG and TIF File Support
Special FX
Complete Customization

#4 SliderDock

It is the next evolution of dock application launcher. SliderDock is an application launcher that will allow you to easily drag and drop icons
to access them later on by double clicking on them. It will be a unique dock where you won't have to chase behind you icons to run an application.
Just rotate your mouse wheel and let the icons come to you.

How cool is that !

Features Includes:
Simple drag and drop function to add an icon
quickly launch an application
use the mouse wheel to let the icons come to you
smooth animations during icons rotation
Highlight effect around selected icon
customizable icons(compatible with objectdock and rocketdock icons)
Hide/Unhide application with the use of a shortcut key
Possibility to rotate icons with arrow keys and launch application with enter.
Different set of icons and configuration for each user.
Reordering icons through simple drag and drop feature.
Fully Customizable.

#5 Circle Dock

It is similar to the , but it is Open Source! So you can basically do anything with it, for Open Source fans out there is this a great news. Customization are infinite.

What Circle Dock Allows You to Do:
Launch your programs from a circular dock.
Drag and drop your files, folders, and shortcuts onto a circular dock that you can resize.
Rotate the dock with either your mouse wheel or the keyboard arrow keys.
Change the image shown for the icons and change the skins (compatible with icons and skins for Rocket Dock, Object Dock, etc.)
The dock appears where your mouse is by pressing a hotkey (default is F1) or your middle mouse button.
Tested on computers with multiple monitors, Windows XP/Vista, 32-bit & 64-bit, and requires only .Net Framework 2.0.
Automatically works on all Windows Vista computers and most Windows XP computers.
A new settings panel that allows you to customize many options. It updates your dock as you make changes. See it change in real time! No need to press an OK button.
Multi-language capable. Just translate the English.ini file to the language of your choice.
Change the image used for the dock icons with the easiest method out there: Just set the program to "Icon Replacement Mode" in the right-click menu of the centre icon and you can change all the icon images by just dragging and dropping new PNG images onto them! Huge time saver when you are customizing your dock!
You can now toggle the visibility of the dock by moving your mouse to any edge of your screen. By default, the left and right edges are used for toggling. No need to press a button!
Rotate the dock with your mouse wheel or arrow keys (customizable).
Click sensitivity adjustment for tablet users.
Reorder the dock items by draging and dropping them over each other.
Organize the dock items using dock folders.
By default, clicking on the centre button does not open the start menu. You can enable this in the settings panel.
Uses the default high resolution icons in Windows Vista.
New easy method of upgrading from older versions.