For taskbar items in ObjectDock, currently ObjectDock pulls the application's icon (32x32) and stretches it if you haven't manually set up an icon for it. This, ends up looking quite bad. Also, if you set an icon for something in the taskbar, it falls out of sync quite easily with what you've set for it as a shortcut, and vice-versa. All of the above results in mis-matched results with poorly stretched images, resulting in one of the two of the following: (1) the user is left with a dock that looks worse-off, or (2) they have to find an icon and replace it themselves...in several places, and they never know an old icon is going to "popup backup!" because they set it as a class-icon. In the next refresh release, I plan to make this process easier by doing several things.
One, windows in the taskbar will (optionally - you can turn it off in the applications dialog) try to read a higher-res icon from their associated program file. If one is available, even if you haven't set an icon it'll use it instead of the window's actual icon. (Explorer.exe is hard-coded excluded from this for taskbar-items)
Two, I'll be providing a set of default images. These images will be included with ObjectDock and displayed for a program if you haven't customized the image yourself, and if ObjectDock was only able to pull a 48x48-or-lower icon for it from the program file. This goes for shortcuts, too. So...if you're an XP user and you added say notepad.exe, you'd see our nice icon...if you are in Vista, you'd see the nice Vista notepad icon.
Three, images set for a shortcut to a program will automatically sync with the image set for its windows. So, set an image for a program's shortcut, and all other shortcuts in ObjectDock as well as icons for its windows in a taskbar on the dock will change also. I might be adding a new checkbox to allow you to disable that on a per-item basis for shortcuts for say if you want a different. More likly that that however I probably will just automatically disable the "syncing" if and only if the shortcut has arguments.
Finally, four...setting an icon "Per-Class" is a very confusing concept. I have a window, I'd like to change its icon...but instead of a simple option, there are hoops to jump through. And then if I want to change it later...i may think that I changed it? But oops, another window opens and that's still the old one since I set the class icon. Also at that point, it becomes impossible to keep icons in sync with shortcuts. So, I'm planning on removing this ability....therefore on the taskbar you'll only be able to set images for programs themselves, not individual types of windows of a program. The only place you'll be able to do this moving forward will be Explorer's folder-browser windows, as well as "rundll32" instances... those each will be treated as a seperate EXE from explorer since their icons are so volitle. Other than that...
So yeah. Basically I have no idea if "proposition four" is going to cause a revolt or not... I have zero idea of if people actually use/truely need the "per-class" icons. Speak up please if you feel you need this feature, but be reasonable if you think that you might be able to part with it for the sake of the better-good. Thanks everyone!
-Jeff Bargmann
ObjectDock Developer
