Glx-Dock / Cairo-Dock

An official beta release of the 2.2 version of GLX-Dock is available.

The main goal of this version is to approach the usability of the <your desktop environment here>-panel.
To reach it, we aimed at making an "Unity" theme, based on the recent interesting remarks of Canonical.

What's new?

4 points were targeted :

GLX-Dock now has 2 new visibility modes: "hide whenever the dock overlaps the active window" and "hide whenever the dock overlaps any window".
The dock will hide itself anytime it could get in your way, and will be visible otherwise.
You can choose between several smooth hiding animations: fade-out, semi-transparent, move-down, etc.
To make things better, icons that should draw your attention (like a message in the Pidgin applet or an alarm in the Clock applet) are visible (and animated) even when the dock is hidden.

Desklets (applets that are detached from the dock) can also be placed on your desktop without preventing you from clicking on what's behind.

Here is a short demo:


Some new key functionnalities make the dock a swiss-knife : possibility to manage tasks in the Clock's calendar, possibility to lock the screen in the Logout applet, possibility to use tiny URLs in the Drop-and-Share applet, the Dustbin applet handles all the drives, etc.
The Me-Menu and Messaging-Menu applets developed by Canonical for the gnome-panel can also be added to the dock in 1 click.

For those who want to write applets easily and in an language, the Dbus API has also gained some new functions. Write a DBus Applet

All the themes (including the default one) have been polished, they are pretty and functionnal after you select them.

The simple config panel now lets you set up most of the parameters you'd like to change in the first 5 minutes.
The advanced config panel is still present for those of you who want to tweak their theme, but you probably don't need it any more for a basic usage.

For this purpose, a new view has been added : the "panel" view. It turns the Dock into a pretty panel.
Also, since netbooks have a small screen footprint, it's a good idea to spread icons over several main docks. Therefore, it's now possible to create as many docks as you want, and to configure them independently (position, visibility, view, background).

Here is a short demo:


To try it:
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If you're under Ubuntu >= 9.04 :
otherwise :A weekly repository is also available for Debian (and other forks like Linux Mint) users (Weekly ppa). For any other GNU/Linux & BSD distributions, you can also compile it with sources code From BZR

It is already very stable, but as any beta, it can contain some bugs.
The work is now focusing on fixing them all.
We appreciate any kind of contribution: bug reports, feedbacks, videos, themes, translations, patches, applets, etc.

PS: Follow us on identi.ca (http://identi.ca/cairodock) or Twitter (http://twitter.com/cairodock) ! Or speak with us on #cairo-dock or #cairo-dock-fr on irc.freenode.net
PS 2: Due to a crappy registrar (vivadomaine.com), the domaine name cairo-dock.org is no longer available. But now, you can find all our "tools" (wiki, forum, doc, repository, etc.) on glx-dock.org. !

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Cairo-dock has started in July 2007, when Fabounet proposed a first version on the ubuntu-fr.org forum.

Since then, new versions have followed at an intensive pace with new functionalities like sub-docks, desklets or OpenGL effects on icons ...
Many people have joined the project, each one bringing its competences in graphics(themes), applets development, or translation.

One can always make the dock better. You are invited to take part and make proposals for future evolutions on the forum !

Friendly, the Cairo-dock's team