Stardock has released ObjectBar beta 0.50 onto its Object Desktop Network (ODNT). ObjectBar is a powerful yet easy to use Start bar replacement.

Nearly every OS has some sort of dock, wharf, bar, finder, center, what have you either docked onto the edge of the screen or free floating. Each OS's equivalent has its own strenghts.

ObjectBar takes all the strengths of those various bars and combines them into a single program. With it, users can easily create their own bars that can have features taken from various OSes as well as Stardock's own innovations. Best of all, ObjectBar can be skinned. Thus users can not only upload their own bars but skins as well. If you check out the ObjectBar section, you not only can have those bars but you can apply different skins to them.

ObjectBar has also focused on not being "screenshot ware". That is, it's designed to be something people use permanently, not something that just looks pretty. To that end, configuring bars is extremely easy.

0.50 adds a host of new features along with a lot of bug fixes. For instance, users can now make system trays in which items on the tray will be hidden after being inactive for X amount of minutes. Users can also now create taskbars in which tasks are filtered out or grouped together by category as well as have multiple tasks (a favorite thing to do is to create a taskbar that has 2 sub-taskbars -- one that just shows tasks that are important and a second one that lists all the rest).

ObjectBar is currently only available on Object Desktop. Visit http://www.objectdesktop.net to learn more.