ObjectBar has been designed with utility value as its highest concern. The fact that it can be made to look beautiful so easily is practically a miracle.

Looking at the attached screenshot, one gets an idea of how far ObjectBar has come.

Feature wise, it's got some great utilitarian features such as:

1) Bars can be hidden until you move your mouse to the edge of a screen at which point the bar can slide out.

2) Tear off menus

3) Complete and seamless system tray integration (far in advance of what is in DesktopX).

4) Very easy to modify themes. Many programs of this kind look great in a screenshot but are really hard to use. ObjectBar makes modifying bars and such easy, even for novices. It supports drag and drop throughout and has consistent, easy to use interface.

5) It uses what's in Windows as much as possible so that it's system independent. For instance, making a WinXP start bar? You can have it use your real quicklaunch so that no matter whose system it's on, it uses their quick launch.

6) Supports plugins and BandVWM objects. It and DesktopX share the same plugin architecture.

7) Generally designed to have the features from every wharf/dock/bar/center/whatever plus many of its own.

And if that wasn't enough, ObjectBar has arguably the most flexible skinning system ever developed.

Normally, one downloads a "theme" and they're pretty much stuck with whatever look it has. But in ObjectBar, skins are seperate from the bars. So you can actually, as a user, change the skin of the bars you've downloaded into skins you've made or skins from other themes. So let's say you download a MacOS bar (Finder bar at the top). But you like the Windows XP blue look. You right click on the bar, change its skin to be the Windows XP skin from an XP theme and suddenly it has a different look entirely.

For instance, I just changed the bar's skin from the original skin to use the dream skin by Dangeruss. Obviously the two themes were never aware that the other existed, that's how flexible ObjectBar is.

https://www.stardock.com/products/objectbar/ob-sept01a.jpg

ObjectBar is part of Stardock Object Desktop which is where DesktopX (which handles the desktop - anyone who thinks they compete has never tried to create a bar with DesktopX or a desktop with objectbar), WindowBlinds (which handles the GUI), IconPackager (the icons), and more. It's at http://www.objectdesktop.com.