operating system: windows 7 - 64 bit

• i have noticed several occasions where clicking on something in the dock will no longer allow me proper control of windows afterwords until another action is performed [such as i've been hitting the start menu button on my keyboard].  for example, while checking whether the bugs i've already listed before were still present in this version before writing them down, i've lost the ability to type in this window until pressing the start button.  in itunes, i've basically lost all functionality until pressing start.

• the start menu, when accessed by the start menu docklet, still does not display correctly on the right-hand side though it works perfectly when brought up by normal means or shortcuts [such as using the keyboard to call it].  simply adding a docklet that calls the start menu up normally rather than making it hover near where the icon is positioned in your dock would seem an acceptable compromise.  since the docklets are generally bundled with object dock from the wincustomize library rather than created by stardock, it might be time to stop relying on the docklets made by other people and add the functionality in yourselves.

• the new change icon dialogue for tabbed docks is simply horrible, but it seems extra ridiculous that there are 2 different dialogues for changing an icon within the same program.  this could be a tolerable change though in the end, as long as you quit changing what folder we are supposed to store these icons in.  at least, that is if we don't want to induce headaches each time we change or add one.  we used to be storing them in the program folder, then it wanted to default it to my documents, now we're back to the program folder?

it seems reasonable to say/request...

C:\Users\username\Documents\Stardock\ObjectDock Library\Images

or

C:\Program Files\Stardock\ObjectDockPlus2

pick one!

• tabbed dock icons still "zoom/grow" by having duplicate icon images on top of itself; leading to ugly effects and becoming noticeable with certain shapes and all transparencies.  other mouseover options would be ideal as well, especially an instant skin specific indicator/arrow type graphic, similar to a running indicator.  we should at least have the zoomer dock options such as rock and glow though.

• it's fine and dandy to have aero peek on running shortcuts [that would show a running indicator], but why is aero peek not shown on running tasks [when the dock is set to display running tasks]?

• there's no clear way to disable the terribly slow minimize/maximize [to dock] animations or disable thumbnails. 

to stop the slow window animation we have to click in troubleshooting [of all things] "temporarily disable all use of thumbnails on windows vista".  what do these two things have to do with each other?  telling it to stop vista thumbnails stops the animation sluggishness, but it doesn't stop "thumbnails"...

to stop the thumbnails, we need to check [in troubleshooting again...] "temporarily disable all special window-event hooking.  yoda is infinitely easier to understand than this.

why is there an option to make the already slow animation even more unbearably slower when shift is held instead of an option to make it not be slow at all, and without having to hold down extra keys every time you click?  not to mention that regardless of whether i check that box or not, holding shift always only makes it animate even slower.

• some running programs do not respond well to right clicking on their icon to edit. 

- trying to change photoshop for example led to the alert that "ObjectDock cannot access information about this window.  It is likely that it has been ran as Administrator while ObjectDock has not.", in the last version it would tend to just crash on certain programs though.

after this happens though, right clicking the icon a second time yields the...

dock options >
dock icon properties...

being shown twice.

i've not seen photoshop cause a lockup or crash in this version yet, but that was the case last time.

- as another example, yahoo messenger when right clicked will call up a contextual menu but all the text aside from "dock options >" will not be visible.

• flyout menus- as a list can still take ages, and when displayed as flyout items can often crash OD entirely, even before reaching an excessive amount of items to display. 

• i still see no way to change the clock hands; a bother because they are very low quality image files and pixelate badly at larger sizes.  a 256x256 quality version would take care of that, but being able to skin the hands as well would be ideal.

• in tabbed docks, the +/- buttons look out of place/off-centered on many skins due to not being able to have reflections like the other icons they sit beside.

• tabbed docks are still utterly useless for users like me because of faulty and limited accessibility.  the fact that tabbed docks are the only separation between free and plus, but that even on the 3rd version of what is being called "beta"... we still can't use hotspots, we still don't have any implemented ability to set up a hotkey, and even the "show in taskbar" option doesn't actually work in objectdock's taskbar, making absolutely every floating dock utterly worthless.  it makes me question, at what point is the money that i've paid for this app going to yield worthwhile and usable results.

• when dragging an icon from a zooming dock to a tabbed dock; the reflection from when it was in the zoomer does not disappear and will remain at whatever edge [bottom for me] it was originally at.

• still limited in displaying running tasks or displaying the contents of the tray, but not being able to show both in one dock.  it's no fun playing whack-a-mole with docks because you're forced to have more than one just to have all your items actually be accessible.

• i still have delays in a zooming dock showing up when accessibility is set to normal time to time, or requiring that i bounce my cursor on that part of the screen several times to get a reaction; it does seem less frequent this time though.

• for some instances, such as with photoshop, clicking an application in the running tasks that is minimized will either restore or maximize the program, but clicking on it when the program is maximized will not minimize it [it will minimize if it is not maximized though].

• reflections and thumbnails in zooming docks jitter up and down by a pixel or two as you scroll through them, not matching up with the smoothness in animation that the icons have.

• we still need the sublevel separation feature which isn't present in this beta, or the last few versions of OD at all despite being an original and heavily relied upon feature when OD came out.  this still leads us to not being able to tell which icon is our messenger contact list and which icons are the conversation windows without playing more whack-a-mole guessing games.

• text in tabbed docks is still lacking, especially where skinning is concerned.  while not really a "problem", it would still be nice to be able to tell the text to display differently when it's active and when it's inactive.  even with the user being able to change font or color, it is reliant upon a tab "button" to indicate which tab is active.

• allow us to set what the defaults are so we can safely remove skins we do not want sitting around.  right clicking on a skin and setting it as a default would be acceptable, as would it just using whatever skins are available; having an invisible dock when you create a new one is the bother.

• tabbed docks lack the transparency features enjoyed on zooming docks.

• we need a "stacks docklet" equiv.  even for those who like the flyouts, they're useless and require you to wait ages for it to cycle to the one you want if you have more than 5 or 6 items in one.

• changing the running indicators again is a step in the right direction, now how about changing flyout arrows in the same manner rather than having to overwrite files?

• tabbed docks suffer from lack of alignment options.  instead of forced left at all times, align right and align center seems a good compromise since tabbed docks would be difficult to make stretch like zoomers.

• a lot of programs are doing as i mentioned with photoshop when trying to change the icons; despite any privileges you give to OD, it simply will not allow you to change the icon.  it's especially annoying now that system icons [such as folders] for explorer.exe show up in the dock as low res icons even when you tell OD to use high quality versions.

• object dock fails to change the icons for all applications of open office.  the dialogue opens, but after picking your icon and hitting "ok", nothing changes.  the same goes for any other method of trying to change them.

• by far my worst instance at the time being is that if i load object dock i cannot close explorer windows with the X button.  i have to unload object dock and close from the windows taskbar.

:: :: :: ::

problems from the last version that i haven't seen/haven't been able to reproduce in this version, but am uncertain are "resolved"...

• i've yet to notice any flickering in the dock or outside of the dock with this version, but it was never a constant occurrence for me in the past.

• in the last version... when changing an icon i repeatedly had a yellow balloon pop up and say "try out the search feature".  nice the first time, but it was in the way of the scrollbar and icons the next 50.  still trying to get used to having 2 different dialogues for changing icons, but i haven't seen it in either so far.

• i've not yet had picture viewer or any other program load behind the other windows.  here's to hoping that remains the case.

• in tabbed docks, the text displayed when hovering over an icon would sometimes remain displayed even when the mouse has been withdrawn from that item.  it also tended to display behind the dock or behind an application.

:: :: :: ::

in the end the only good thing i can say is that, at least it has been very handy to be able to close object dock quickly again, since that's about all i want to do with it currently. 

=[

Hi horizon, some responses:

• i have noticed several occasions where clicking on something in the dock will no longer allow me proper control of windows afterwords until another action is performed [such as i've been hitting the start menu button on my keyboard]. for example, while checking whether the bugs i've already listed before were still present in this version before writing them down, i've lost the ability to type in this window until pressing the start button. in itunes, i've basically lost all functionality until pressing start.

-Unfortunately while we do our best to ensure compatibility with all programs, ObjectDock cannot gurantee 100% compatibility with all programs. In fact many times, programs go out of their way to do tricks that may 'work' in the taskbar / systemtray... but are non-standard and regularly cause havoc in 3rd party programs like ours. I know that we did have an issue exactly like this with Skype in the past; we were fortunately able to resolve that one as of beta-2 earlier this summer, and so I invite you to check to see if that has been resolved. (The fix was not specific to Skype, but rather a workaround for certain types of windows that are structured in a non-standard way). I did attempt to reproduce your iTunes report and was unable to do so (Win7 x64, iTunes 10)

• the start menu, when accessed by the start menu docklet, still does not display correctly on the right-hand side though it works perfectly when brought up by normal means or shortcuts [such as using the keyboard to call it]. simply adding a docklet that calls the start menu up normally rather than making it hover near where the icon is positioned in your dock would seem an acceptable compromise. since the docklets are generally bundled with object dock from the wincustomize library rather than created by stardock, it might be time to stop relying on the docklets made by other people and add the functionality in yourselves.

-This unfortunately is not something that can be fixed. It is a glitch in windows ; the start menu was not designed to be repositioned. We are strongly considering disabling the "move the start menu" functionality while in Windows 7. The "Show Start Menu" docklet was created by Stardock.

• the new change icon dialogue for tabbed docks is simply horrible, but it seems extra ridiculous that there are 2 different dialogues for changing an icon within the same program. this could be a tolerable change though in the end, as long as you quit changing what folder we are supposed to store these icons in. at least, that is if we don't want to induce headaches each time we change or add one. we used to be storing them in the program folder, then it wanted to default it to my documents, now we're back to the program folder? it seems reasonable to say/request... C:\Users\username\Documents\Stardock\ObjectDock Library\Images or C:\Program Files\Stardock\ObjectDockPlus2 pick one!

- "C:\Program Files\Stardock\ObjectDockPlus2" This is what the new Choose Icon dialog defaults to. Leaving the old folder for legacy purposes. "Dock packs" that extract to this location are no longer a feature of the program (but can still be used if downloaded). At this time for technical reasons not every situation is compatible with the new Choose Icon dialog, such as choosing images for docklets. Some tweak work still needs to be done to this system.



• tabbed dock icons still "zoom/grow" by having duplicate icon images on top of itself; leading to ugly effects and becoming noticeable with certain shapes and all transparencies. other mouseover options would be ideal as well, especially an instant skin specific indicator/arrow type graphic, similar to a running indicator. we should at least have the zoomer dock options such as rock and glow though.

-This is by design. If this non-ideal, I recommend disabling the effect. At this time there are no plans for additional effects in tabbed docks, though it is not a possibility we've ruled out.



• it's fine and dandy to have aero peek on running shortcuts [that would show a running indicator], but why is aero peek not shown on running tasks [when the dock is set to display running tasks]?

-At this time AeroPeek was designed to work only with shortcuts, not with groups in the taskbar. We are recommending users look at trying the new "Show Applications" mode in today's build of ObjectDock (a feature we had been planning to be in OD2 from the get-go but wanted to make sure we got done right)



• there's no clear way to disable the terribly slow minimize/maximize [to dock] animations or disable thumbnails. to stop the slow window animation we have to click in troubleshooting [of all things] "temporarily disable all use of thumbnails on windows vista". what do these two things have to do with each other? telling it to stop vista thumbnails stops the animation sluggishness, but it doesn't stop "thumbnails"... to stop the thumbnails, we need to check [in troubleshooting again...] "temporarily disable all special window-event hooking. yoda is infinitely easier to understand than this. why is there an option to make the already slow animation even more unbearably slower when shift is held instead of an option to make it not be slow at all, and without having to hold down extra keys every time you click? not to mention that regardless of whether i check that box or not, holding shift always only makes it animate even slower.

-The minimize animation can be disabled in the new UI, head to the settings for your quicklaunch dock. In the "On my dock" area, there is a "taskbar options" area. You can disable the setting there. -Having the shift key slow animations is disabled by default. I don't know that this option is even available in OD2 anymore, so I recommend editing your settings.ini to ensure the following line exists: "ShiftSlowsAnimation=0" and not "ShiftSlowsAnimation=1"

• some running programs do not respond well to right clicking on their icon to edit. - trying to change photoshop for example led to the alert that "ObjectDock cannot access information about this window. It is likely that it has been ran as Administrator while ObjectDock has not.", in the last version it would tend to just crash on certain programs though. after this happens though, right clicking the icon a second time yields the... dock options > dock icon properties... being shown twice. i've not seen photoshop cause a lockup or crash in this version yet, but that was the case last time. - as another example, yahoo messenger when right clicked will call up a contextual menu but all the text aside from "dock options >" will not be visible.

-As previously mentioned, while we do our best to maintain compatibility it is difficult to keep that at 100% due to both technical and practical reasons. This may or may not be one of those cases, and while your case has been noted regarding Yahoo we don't have a fix in mind at this time

• flyout menus- as a list can still take ages, and when displayed as flyout items can often crash OD entirely, even before reaching an excessive amount of items to display. 

- It is not recommended that flyout menus be used for an excessively large number of items (from both a program/memory standpoint, and realistically a usability standpoint). Flyout menus were intended as a novel and fun way to access nested icons quickly.



• i still see no way to change the clock hands; a bother because they are very low quality image files and pixelate badly at larger sizes. a 256x256 quality version would take care of that, but being able to skin the hands as well would be ideal.

- We would like to rewrite the clock plugin (i too think it does not look particularly good) but it is not in our current priorities. If it were done however, it would definitely have skinned hands.



• in tabbed docks, the +/- buttons look out of place/off-centered on many skins due to not being able to have reflections like the other icons they sit beside.

-At this time as you noted, the +/- icons in tabbed docks do not support reflection. This is something in our list of items would like to approach but do not plan to at this current time.



• tabbed docks are still utterly useless for users like me because of faulty and limited accessibility. the fact that tabbed docks are the only separation between free and plus, but that even on the 3rd version of what is being called "beta"... we still can't use hotspots, we still don't have any implemented ability to set up a hotkey, and even the "show in taskbar" option doesn't actually work in objectdock's taskbar, making absolutely every floating dock utterly worthless. it makes me question, at what point is the money that i've paid for this app going to yield worthwhile and usable results.

-We intend to bring back Hotspot functionality for the final version of ObjectDock 2.0.



• when dragging an icon from a zooming dock to a tabbed dock; the reflection from when it was in the zoomer does not disappear and will remain at whatever edge [bottom for me] it was originally at.

-Interesting. I have not heard of this but have noted it to look into soon. If we're able to reproduce this in any way (or see where it might be happening) we'll take care of it for sure.



• still limited in displaying running tasks or displaying the contents of the tray, but not being able to show both in one dock. it's no fun playing whack-a-mole with docks because you're forced to have more than one just to have all your items actually be accessible.

-The new "Show Applications" mode works concurrently with the system tray mode. We recommend giving it a try! It's on by default in new-user settings from here on out. The current build doesn't show iTunes in the running-application list but this was already caught by our QA team today and will be resolved at the next release



• i still have delays in a zooming dock showing up when accessibility is set to normal time to time, or requiring that i bounce my cursor on that part of the screen several times to get a reaction; it does seem less frequent this time though.

-Noted, however we have been unable to reproduce this in such a way where it's predictable. (E.g. been able to have it randomly happen once, but have been unable to reproduce otherwise or figure out why that might happen). So unfortunately no news on this for the time being.



• for some instances, such as with photoshop, clicking an application in the running tasks that is minimized will either restore or maximize the program, but clicking on it when the program is maximized will not minimize it [it will minimize if it is not maximized though].

-As noted above, while we strive for 100% compatibility, unfortunately at this time / given the resources for the program (It's a $19.95 product) we're just not there at this time. 




• reflections and thumbnails in zooming docks jitter up and down by a pixel or two as you scroll through them, not matching up with the smoothness in animation that the icons have.

-We've done considerable work to smooth out this animation, but unfortunately we can't claim absolutely flawless smoothness at this point. Consider it a difficulty of the graphics system in use by ObjectDock. Thumbnails are particularly tricky as it is a completely separate system, which cannot be kept in sync with other drawing operations. We do very much care about the smoothness of our program, however there are some limits to how far we can redesign the program at this point in time to get to a level of perfection.



• we still need the sublevel separation feature which isn't present in this beta, or the last few versions of OD at all despite being an original and heavily relied upon feature when OD came out. this still leads us to not being able to tell which icon is our messenger contact list and which icons are the conversation windows without playing more whack-a-mole guessing games.

-Again, hoping the Aero-Peek-like functionality and Show Applications mode will open up some better functionality



• text in tabbed docks is still lacking, especially where skinning is concerned. while not really a "problem", it would still be nice to be able to tell the text to display differently when it's active and when it's inactive. even with the user being able to change font or color, it is reliant upon a tab "button" to indicate which tab is active.

-The text has been improved, but still is less than what I'd call "ideal". This is due to compromise... there are numerous drawing methods we can consider for drawing the text, however we choose to pick the one that we felt would work more often / consistantly given that the program is skinnable. An alternative might be to allow picking of exactly how the text should be drawn, but we do not want to overload the program with options at this time.-Manually setting tab text color is something we've noted as a top-tier request for 2.0-final but not something that's on the definitely-going-in list at this time.



• allow us to set what the defaults are so we can safely remove skins we do not want sitting around. right clicking on a skin and setting it as a default would be acceptable, as would it just using whatever skins are available; having an invisible dock when you create a new one is the bother.

-I would agree with that. I think perhaps the new "Default" should be "whatever skin you picked last". This has been noted.



• tabbed docks lack the transparency features enjoyed on zooming docks.

-At this time this is correct. Though we are aware of this deficiency as an area of future improvement. A "ghosted mode" for tabbed docks wherein they are partially visible and then fade to full visibility when mouseovered is something that does sound good to us



• we need a "stacks docklet" equiv. even for those who like the flyouts, they're useless and require you to wait ages for it to cycle to the one you want if you have more than 5 or 6 items in one.
• changing the running indicators again is a step in the right direction, now how about changing flyout arrows in the same manner rather than having to overwrite files?
• tabbed docks suffer from lack of alignment options. instead of forced left at all times, align right and align center seems a good compromise since tabbed docks would be difficult to make stretch like zoomers.

-Unfortunately the above features are not ones we have planned at this time.



• a lot of programs are doing as i mentioned with photoshop when trying to change the icons; despite any privileges you give to OD, it simply will not allow you to change the icon. it's especially annoying now that system icons [such as folders] for explorer.exe show up in the dock as low res icons even when you tell OD to use high quality versions.• object dock fails to change the icons for all applications of open office. the dialogue opens, but after picking your icon and hitting "ok", nothing changes. the same goes for any other method of trying to change them.

-I recommend trying the new Show Applications mode, I tried it with photoshop and had no problems. Given however,customizing the icon in the regular window-taskbar in objectdock worked frim for me as well.


• by far my worst instance at the time being is that if i load object dock i cannot close explorer windows with the X button. i have to unload object dock and close from the windows taskbar.

-? Not sure.. I have tried this myself and unless i'm misunderstanding, have not been able to reproduce.

A note to all - A refresh was put out today, be sure to check it out!

New (major!) feature:
-New "Show Applications" mode for Quicklaunch docks (Windows7-taskbar-like functionality...running applications not already on dock have links automatically/temporarily created for them... allow pinning/unpinning/etc)

Tweaks/fixes:
-Reorganized right-click menu when right clicking shortcuts on quicklaunch docks, to emphasize interacting with the application
-Fixed "Browsing to object failed" messages and other such failures when interacting with the new Choose Icon dialog. (Search command in explorer-browser was too complex)
-"Browse..." menu item in new Choose Icon dialog hooked up again
-Fixed glitch with tabbed dock mouse-activation (dock wouldn't activate via click, only after delay)
-Fixed right-mouse button drags to zoomer docks not working

-Unfortunately while we do our best to ensure compatibility with all programs, ObjectDock cannot gurantee 100% compatibility with all programs. In fact many times, programs go out of their way to do tricks that may 'work' in the taskbar / systemtray... but are non-standard and regularly cause havoc in 3rd party programs like ours. I know that we did have an issue exactly like this with Skype in the past; we were fortunately able to resolve that one as of beta-2 earlier this summer, and so I invite you to check to see if that has been resolved. (The fix was not specific to Skype, but rather a workaround for certain types of windows that are structured in a non-standard way). I did attempt to reproduce your iTunes report and was unable to do so (Win7 x64, iTunes 10)

i've decided that to load objectdock back up during my reply.  at the moment i have no issue, but this is something i'll keep my eye out for while writing.

-This unfortunately is not something that can be fixed. It is a glitch in windows ; the start menu was not designed to be repositioned. We are strongly considering disabling the "move the start menu" functionality while in Windows 7. The "Show Start Menu" docklet was created by Stardock.

this is exactly what i was recommending.  i'd imagine it's not impossible to move the start menu, but even if you can't have it anywhere, the start menu can appear in any corner of the screen.  when the start menu is activated normally, it will show up according to where your taskbar is positioned, even when hidden by OD.  at the worst. there are 4 locations we can choose from in this fashion.

i myself never used the start menu docklet, because i was so programmed to look for it in the lower left and thought it seemed out of place hovering in the middle of my screen.  to add the start menu that would work this way, i needed to make a shortcut to this small utility...

http://www.tordex.com/tools/

this is where i send everyone who has an issue with the docklet.  the thing i find interesting, is that in using an older version of the press-start in windows 7; it doesn't' show me the start menu, but instead shows me the icons in my tray that i have hidden.  it shows me this as if i had clicked on the little white arrow next to the clock in the taskbar.  i'm probably just lucky to have stumbled upon this by keeping an old file saved, but this would be another great thing to have built in because the object dock displayed tasks does not show anything you have set to hidden in the windows taskbar.

the original start menu docklet was designed for windows xp though, and i'd imagine that people using that OS might still enjoy it, but it would be grand to see a "windows 7 start menu" docklet which does not hover as an addition, unless replacing the old one altogether seems your preferred route.

the reason i hold the position that you should not rely on wincustomize docklets is because they become dated...

when it comes to using object dock as an interface replacement, having access to the start menu and having things like the stacks docklet are pretty much a necessity.  the fear is, that unless stardock has such things built into OD as standard features, we may one day lose out if other 3rd parties stop their support. 

it's great that we can use the stacks docklet now, but as so many view the stacks docklet as a necessity when using object dock, it would be a horrible shame to see that docklet run into incompatibility issues like the start menu currently is. 

if we had such a feature built into objectdock, we could be assured that "for however long we choose to use object dock, it will always have the features we want".  that's why we continue to plead, because we've already run into issues like this. 

-This is by design. If this non-ideal, I recommend disabling the effect. At this time there are no plans for additional effects in tabbed docks, though it is not a possibility we've ruled out.

i understand the general way in which it functions.  an icon is displayed, but also has several other sizes of the icon being hidden.  changing which is visible and which are hidden produces the effect of "growing" similar to still frames in animation.

keeping in mind that this was the original solution for achieving this; would it not be manageable to have the original icon disappear when the "grow" effect is active, or to make the small frame of this animation "be" the icon we see.  in which case the grow effect would always be active, just "playing the animation" until the mouse hovers over it?

as far as bugs go, i can't claim this to be one, but i look at this as a flaw none the less.  it creates limitations on the skinning side.  i waited half a decade for the ability to skin zoomer docks correctly [like yzdock etc. allowed] with this new "true stretch" ability, but i would like to know that this issue is going to be remedied "someday".  it's not paramount to functionality, and simply turning off the effect makes it difficult to distinguish or recognize that OD is responding; it would simply be nice to know that... one day... when time permits, the grow effect will be changed in a way that i don't have to forgo transparency, or force a background onto thin or curved shapes to make sure it displays attractively.  having another effect would help, but ultimately i'd like to see the grow/zoom effect perfected.

-At this time AeroPeek was designed to work only with shortcuts, not with groups in the taskbar. We are recommending users look at trying the new "Show Applications" mode in today's build of ObjectDock (a feature we had been planning to be in OD2 from the get-go but wanted to make sure we got done right)

this one isn't a big deal for me, i just happened to notice it.  i'll give a look at the show applications mode, but aero peek is something i myself can live without; i just thought this might have been overlooked.

-As previously mentioned, while we do our best to maintain compatibility it is difficult to keep that at 100% due to both technical and practical reasons. This may or may not be one of those cases, and while your case has been noted regarding Yahoo we don't have a fix in mind at this time

i do... trillian~

yahoo was just another one of those "things i noticed", but i have had this happen with other applications.  one thing i may note, is that yahoo+OD might have been the reason my loss of control happened before... in writing my post this time, the only difference is that yahoo is not active, and so far i've had no issue with being unable to type here, or change songs in itunes.  i did forget to mention before that i was using firefox though.

the plus side is that all options work fine when this loss of visibility occurs, you just can't "read" which one you're clicking on.  it's just a matter of knowing where to click ahead of time by comparing the list generated with another icon.

i trust photoshop and other icons such as explorer is/was just a fluke, a lot of people reported a lack of being able to change icons.  the previous version of OD 2 beta let me, as did 1.9. 

- It is not recommended that flyout menus be used for an excessively large number of items (from both a program/memory standpoint, and realistically a usability standpoint). Flyout menus were intended as a novel and fun way to access nested icons quickly.

that's why i stressed it happens "even before excessive" =p

though i recognize that excessive is a subjective term, i rarely use flyouts so i'm not too worried on this one either.  it works perfectly for doing things like grouping "photoshop, illustrator, indesign, flash, and dreamweaver", causing them to flyout when i click the "adobe" icon, but for opening my computer or my documents, it's another story.  i suppose this is where you tell me your intent is different than my expectations, but this is where i remind you how many of us would just love you bunches if we had "stacks" docklet built in and officially supported~

- We would like to rewrite the clock plugin (i too think it does not look particularly good) but it is not in our current priorities. If it were done however, it would definitely have skinned hands.

what the... clock hands aren't your top priority?!!

actually, this is the type of response i wish i was hearing more often.  for example; this is the kind of thing i wish you would say on my inquiry for the "grow" effect. 

"it might be the last thing i want to do... but it's still something i want to do".

i've always been a supporter of objectdock, but i often worry that OD is only worked on when it comes to compatibility/bugs, though i neglected when it comes to improvement.

i suppose it's foolish of me to think OD would be stardock's biggest priority either, but i believe OD still has a lot of unused potential for becoming incomparably amazing.

one small step for clocks, one giant leap for docks?

i hope so.

-At this time as you noted, the +/- icons in tabbed docks do not support reflection. This is something in our list of items would like to approach but do not plan to at this current time.

i think it would be nice to have the choice, since in some docks it looks better without the reflection, but yeah... i'm fine with these types of "in the future" answers.  in the meantime; "true stretch" and "reflections" have gone a long way to make me happy for now.

-We intend to bring back Hotspot functionality for the final version of ObjectDock 2.0.

this comes back to my point about "potential". 

the use of a hotspot was always a "compromise" i used for years, and in those years i've spent my time on these forums saying "hot... keys... KEYS".  to be able to bring a floating/hidden dock to the top by pushing a button on my mouse, tablet, pen, or keyboard would take OD to a whole new level of usability and workflow "sexiness".

at the time being though, i have nothing.  and while the promise hotspots coming back does give me assurance that i will one day be able to take advantage of tabbed docks again, what about the fact that RIGHT NOW... when i set accessibility to "show in taskbar", it doesn't show in objectdocks taskbar? you didn't respond to this issue. 

i would be completely happy to access my tabbed dock through my zooming/quicklaunch dock until hotspots return, and would probably like being able to use that shortcut in conjunction with hotspots when they return if hotkeys is an addition that gets dismissed.

the question for "now" though is, why does setting accessibility to "taskbar" work only for the windows taskbar and not the OD taskbar?

-Interesting. I have not heard of this but have noted it to look into soon. If we're able to reproduce this in any way (or see where it might be happening) we'll take care of it for sure.

the case of the reflection lingering is simple, and reproducing it is as well.

set a zoomer dock centered in the bottom screen; set a floating tabbed dock anywhere else, but for the sake of seeing this easier put the tabbed dock in a location where the zoomer dock is not directly below it.  drag an icon from the zoomer dock up and to the left [or right] and release it to add it to the tabbed dock.  as you drag, you will notice that the reflection follows your movements on the y axis, but on the x axis the reflection stays the same as it was in the zooming dock.  after you've moved the icon successfully from the zoomer to the tabbed dock, you'll see that the reflecting lingers in the location of whatever y axis it happened to be in at the time of adding it to the other dock.

i can supply a screenshot if needed, but i don't think you'll have trouble reproducing or spotting this.

i also forget if i mentioned it, but unloading and reloading object dock will remove the effect when it happens; it doesn't remain even as some ghost even when OD is closed.  it seems more or less that when the icon is moved from one dock to the other, it just doesn't know to stop producing it's reflection from the old dock until reloaded.

-The new "Show Applications" mode works concurrently with the system tray mode. We recommend giving it a try! It's on by default in new-user settings from here on out. The current build doesn't show iTunes in the running-application list but this was already caught by our QA team today and will be resolved at the next release

that again huh? well i'll definitely give "show applications" a look, but despite the possibility of now having other options; i still i have to ask... are there complications when it comes to showing both in the same dock?  i feel this is something that has been requested since the beginning and i'm surprised it's still not available.  i've always wondered if this was just an option that you haven't made available, or if it was something that was hard to accomplish; perhaps something different altogether?

-Noted, however we have been unable to reproduce this in such a way where it's predictable. (E.g. been able to have it randomly happen once, but have been unable to reproduce otherwise or figure out why that might happen). So unfortunately no news on this for the time being.

i can live with that for now. for the most part i find it happening most often with photoshop, and considering your other comments regarding photoshop and so forth, i'd expect you to say it's unusual GUI is to blame again.  it's a minor annoyance, but if it helps figure anything out; it appears to me that it's not that object dock isn't un-hiding or failing to recognize my gestures, it's seems that it's not top level and may be fighting other windows for the "front position".  in all cases that i've seen this happen, my second attempt successfully brings the dock in view.

-As noted above, while we strive for 100% compatibility, unfortunately at this time / given the resources for the program (It's a $19.95 product) we're just not there at this time.

to be extra clear, i'm using cs4, which has a custom GUI separate from normal program windows.  i expect a lot of my problems with photoshop are related to this rather than OD having a lot of problems and photoshop just being why i notice it.  100% compatibility is a dream; but photoshop is such a commonly used program for a lot of people around here [and probably elsewhere] that i just hope it might be added to the programs you do end up ironing out compatibility issues with.

-We've done considerable work to smooth out this animation, but unfortunately we can't claim absolutely flawless smoothness at this point. Consider it a difficulty of the graphics system in use by ObjectDock. Thumbnails are particularly tricky as it is a completely separate system, which cannot be kept in sync with other drawing operations. We do very much care about the smoothness of our program, however there are some limits to how far we can redesign the program at this point in time to get to a level of perfection.

i can personally live without the thumbnails, and i can appreciate the difficulty they present, but the reflections i hope to see perform with the same smoothness as the icons eventually.  is it possible that the reflections are simply not in the "sweet spot" and are trying to be in a fraction of a pixel rather than in one or the other?  if i recall, the ini had some settings for reflections position and so forth, maybe i can test that theory myself later.

if this is the case, i doubt it's because you've put in a number like 2.7 pixels instead of a 2 or a 3, but i'm thinking that if you had reflections put on a 5 pixel edge distance, but the icon/dock size is set to a number not divisible evenly... such as 73, that might be why it wants to go from one pixel to another depending on current size of the icon as the dock zooms and the icon grows in size.

-Again, hoping the Aero-Peek-like functionality and Show Applications mode will open up some better functionality

i'm looking forward to testing it out, but for the sake of my testing purposes, i want to continue using this version while i write.  so far i still have no issue; perhaps i'll open up yahoo at the end and see if the problem immediately occurs~

-The text has been improved, but still is less than what I'd call "ideal". This is due to compromise... there are numerous drawing methods we can consider for drawing the text, however we choose to pick the one that we felt would work more often / consistantly given that the program is skinnable. An alternative might be to allow picking of exactly how the text should be drawn, but we do not want to overload the program with options at this time.-Manually setting tab text color is something we've noted as a top-tier request for 2.0-final but not something that's on the definitely-going-in list at this time.

this is another one where i'm just wanting to open new doors for skinning, and can easily tolerate having it on the back burner.  i don't consider it as big an issue as the tabbed "grow" effect and can accept the point that "form follows function" in this case completely, since it's really just a limitation and doesn't produce visual flaws.

-I would agree with that. I think perhaps the new "Default" should be "whatever skin you picked last". This has been noted.

that would be a wonderful little blessing. 

• we need a "stacks docklet" equiv. even for those who like the flyouts, they're useless and require you to wait ages for it to cycle to the one you want if you have more than 5 or 6 items in one.
• changing the running indicators again is a step in the right direction, now how about changing flyout arrows in the same manner rather than having to overwrite files?
• tabbed docks suffer from lack of alignment options. instead of forced left at all times, align right and align center seems a good compromise since tabbed docks would be difficult to make stretch like zoomers.

-Unfortunately the above features are not ones we have planned at this time.

all i can say is i hope that this changes in the future; especially the stacks and alignment options.

i feel it's only a matter of time before the stacks docklet becomes completely incompatible with OD.  we all got along fine without it in the beginning, but today a large percentage of OD's users have come to hold great a reliance on it.

• a lot of programs are doing as i mentioned with photoshop when trying to change the icons; despite any privileges you give to OD, it simply will not allow you to change the icon. it's especially annoying now that system icons [such as folders] for explorer.exe show up in the dock as low res icons even when you tell OD to use high quality versions.

• object dock fails to change the icons for all applications of open office. the dialogue opens, but after picking your icon and hitting "ok", nothing changes. the same goes for any other method of trying to change them.

-I recommend trying the new Show Applications mode, I tried it with photoshop and had no problems. Given however,customizing the icon in the regular window-taskbar in objectdock worked frim for me as well.

i do intend to look it over, but i should say that open office is a particular case all its own and google shows me that i'm not alone on this one; perhaps it might be worth taking a look at?  it's a free open source program, and fairly constantly changing, but i've constantly been unable to change this suites icons in object dock throughout my use of it.

• by far my worst instance at the time being is that if i load object dock i cannot close explorer windows with the X button. i have to unload object dock and close from the windows taskbar.

-? Not sure.. I have tried this myself and unless i'm misunderstanding, have not been able to reproduce.

i'm not sure either, but i'm running all applications i was in my last post; even yahoo now, but i'm having none of the issues with loss of application control, or ability to close any of my windows.

maybe rebooting since the install flushed those particular quirks out of my system.

at any rate, i think it's time for me to test the new release.

also, thank you.  i appreciate your reading and responding

though it may not be the most thorough lookover, after giving this new update a try it seems there is some merit in a follow up.

while the "show applications" mode does look like something i could potentially consider using, it does not address the "task and tray" simultaneously concern.

of my 4 running programs, it also only recognized firefox and trillian as being open and didn't display photoshop or itunes in the dock at all; so using it is not an option for now at least.  when set to the traditional "display running tasks" i'm used to using, all 4 do however show up.

of the very few shortcuts i keep in my dock, the running programs would appear in between them.  while not a problem per se, i can't help but have a preference to see tasks on one side and shortcuts on the other; separated by a clear divider.  i would definitely prefer this as opposed to having a dozen shortcuts though, but the "display tasks" mode seems more ideal to me personally.

-

both this version and this new mode regrettably did nothing to alleviate the issue of me being unable to change icons for photoshop, explorer, and so forth; many of which continue to show as low res despite telling OD to use high quality ones.

-

i've also stumbled into the likely reason as to why i ended up unable to close explorer windows before.  when fighting with the icons being low res and trying to change them, i tried clicking on the "explorer window icon" that was shown in the dock after opening "my computer".  with no luck on getting high quality images or being able to change the icon, i tried something else...

i right clicked on the "my computer" entry in the dock and selected "remove icon".  not only did it remove the associated image from the dock entry, it removed the entry from my docks display of running tasks entirely.  i then tried to close the explorer window and found that i was unable to. 

just as before i had to quit objectdock in order to, but just quitting objectdock wasn't enough.  even after OD is unloaded, you still cannot close the explorer window by clicking on the X in the corner; you must right click and select close from the windows taskbar in order to kill that window.

i feel like these issues may be related, [especially the issues with low res system icons and the inability to change icons] but i don't have anything particular to base that on other than that they showed up at the same time when i updated to the 3rd beta.

-

i may mess with this further later, but for now i'm tired.

oh, and i did try both of the "reset" options found in the troubleshooting settings; neither had any effect on this issue.

with all these endless problems, several of which were uncommon to the problems others have reported, i figured it wouldn't hurt anything for me to completely wipe objectdock off the face of my computer and start all over... again.

i expected it would be a waste of time since neither of the "restore defaults" options had any positive effect, but i'm glad to say purging the program completely and reinstalling remedied a few issues.

-

the problem i was having with low quality system icons regardless of my OD settings is gone, as is the inability to change them because of some warning dialogue regarding "admin levels". 

"show applications" now shows everything running and is nicely organized, where before i noted only seeing 2 out of the 4 that were running and those 2 were appearing in random locations within the dock. 

the problem of being unable to close explorer windows is also gone.

everything else i mentioned however remains, excluding that i noticed in my new install that the start docklet has been changed to show up in the default location rather than hover near the dock, i'm happy for that one~

the case of being unable to change the icons for open office applications is the only icon related issue i still have, but open office was a different case altogether and present in all past versions of OD. 

with open office, when you select and icon and click ok, it simply does not have any effect.  the others were related to admin level or showing low quality system icons.

actually, a low quality system icon is part of the problem with open office, but the bigger issue is being unable to change it.

to shed more light on this though, your new option for "show applications" has been helpful.  i have discovered another peculiarity regarding its icon in objectdock's running tasks.  when you create a new document you see one icon, but when you open a document you've saved before you see a different icon; trying to change the icon you see in the second case will fail as always, but it will "change" it back to the icon you see for starting new files.

the real interesting thing i've found is from your "show applications" mode.  where i would expect to see itunes for itunes, firefox for firefox, so forth and so on... for openoffice writer, i see "soffice.bin" in "show applications".  it appears as a blank page icon, and i am actually able to change this one, though the change does not save and reverts to a blank icon next time it opens.  the other thing to note is that it does not show a running indicator like the others. 

in openoffice's program folder i see a 'swriter.exe', but clicking on that runs the processes soffice.bin [59,548k], soffice.exe [852k], and swriter.exe [736k].

that certainly seems unusual, but given that we now know that the .bin file is the one recognized as the "running program" rather than the executable; might an easy way of tackling this be possible? 

i'm going to continue to look into it, but my initial hope that i could run into the appimages.ini file and get some effect by changing all three processes' icons manually yielded no effect.

-

anyway, i've thankfully returned to level of tolerable use with objectdock. 

there are two or so other things to say though~

from everything i've experienced so far, i believe many of my problems occurred and forced me to reinstall when i used the "remove icon" option.  you might want to glance over the effects of this action yourself, but i'm sure as hell never clicking on it again~

and second is that, when i go into settings and uncheck "enable aero peek on running tasks", the change is never saved.  it will still be enabled when you close, and opening settings up again you will find that it is once again checked to be enabled.

also the photoviewer bug of loading behind other window has sadly shown up again, just when i thought i'd seen the end of it.

cheers

Just one thing I've noticed right off.... The "Show Applications" mode works great, but only if its a 32 bit application.

I tried multiple 64bit programs such as: Photoshop CS5, Abobe Lightroom, Intrernet Explorer, Windows Media Player,

& WinRAR.  None of them show on the dock.  Only if I run the 32 bit versions, then they show on the dock... 

Also, if I place a shortcut to a 64 bit program on the dock, it does not show a running indicator when the program is running.

Any idea if/when this will be fixed?

Hi Jeff,

We've been unable to reproduce this. This was a known problem in one of the betas from prehaps a week or two ago ; are you still seeing this problem in the latest revision on Impulse?

First off, Let me tell you that I have been a HUGE fan of ObjectDock for about 3 years now. I absolutely LOVE 2.0! I thought it was great from the first beta, and the final is absolutely awesome! Thanks for all your work, Jeff!

One thing I've noticed is that, when Java, Impulse, and some other programs need my permission to update, I don't get any notifier icons in the dock. There have been times when applications were sitting there waiting for my input for a long time because I didn't have a notifier.

I thought maybe just having the shield icon appear on the dock would do the trick.

Thanks!