SimDock
Today, I want to demonstrate a useful and simple dock application. I
have searched for an dock application which as some eyecandy, doesn't
depend on an desktop environment or window manager, because I use
different window managers depending on my needs.
And this made life difficult, you have a lot of choice if you just need
an dock application:
- ksmoothock or kxdocker for KDE
- engage for e17
- gapplets for gnome
- windowmaker has an built in dock system
- bbdock for Openbox/Blackbox/Fluxbox
but no indepenent application.
Yesterday, at last, I have found a dock which fits my needs. It is
called simdock (simple dock). The first nice thing about it is that it
has a relative small dependency footprint. The second advantage is
that it looks nice without needing an x11 acceleration:
And the configuration is really simple, too. You can either configure
the dock with the help of an gui, by right click on the dock.
You have a dialog for adding a launcher
and for general configuration
The only thing which you can't configure with the gui is the ordering
of the icons. You need a commandline for this. The launcher
configuration is stored in ~/.SimDock/launchers.xml .
This file should be self explaining. Just move the entry in your
desired order and restart the dock.
Just some hints about startup:
Automatic detection of my wallpaper failed during every startup and,
therefore, I had a black dockbar-background. You can change this by
telling simdock what wallpaper your using. Start simdock with
simdock -b PATH_TO_WALLPAPER -t {centered, streched}
Now the dock just fit in with the rest of the screen. Simdock is not just a launcherdock, but acts as a taskbar as well. It
displays all running application in the dock, like MacOSX does it.
Additionally, it displays all dock icons which are used by
applitcations like sim/pidgin(etc.).
In conclusion, simdock is a useful program to act as a dock. You
won't need any other panel application and therefore you have free
space on your display for you "real" application.