MG453

Join Date 08/2009

ObjectDock 2.0 Test Drive

9 June 2010

1st let me say I did my test drive of ObjectDock 2.0 on a Win 7 Ultimate 64-bit system. I went to the stardock site and paid the $19.95 for the software. I could have just paid for the upgrade because I already have the 1.9 ver from a few years ago, but I just wanted to make sure I had the latest of everything. Anyway after going thru all the e-mail thing, the password/username setup again, and all the download links just to get impulse to download the program. Whats up with all that CRAP?

I finally got the program installed - Yes it looks good on the surface but the program has some problems. The 1st thing I noticed was when I went into setup some of the words were on top of each other. I changed the font size and type but it did not help. One BIG thing I wanted to see was if the system tray icons would show up on my dock AND be animated - I like to see that my antivirus is updateing itself, and that my firewall is blocking or allowing something in or out. So the animated system tray icons are very inportant to me. Well I was pleased to see that the system tray icons did show on my dock and they were also animated - cool! But the downside is they look like crap next to the other icons on the dock. Why is that??? I also found out just by accident that you can change the look of the system tray icons on you dock by holding down the left mouse button over the ones you want to change. A new window will open up and it allows you to change the icon. At this point I was Sooooo Happy! But that did not last long because the nice looking icons I had just changed to were not animated - they just set there. When I say animated I am talking about the way the firewall and antivirus let you know they are doing something, not the way objectdock makes icons move, rock, glow and so on.

So I can have ugly system tray icon on my dock that work correctly or very nice looking icons system tray icons that do not act the way they should. That sucks. Have any of you found a way to correct this?

The next and most important thing I wanted to do was create some new docks and add a Fly-out menus to them, but I found that this feature has beed removed from the 2.0 ver. ARE THEY CRAZY!!!? That is or was the coolest thing about objectdock. But I was able to figure out a work around to this problem. Just install the 1.9 ver - using that dam impulse thing. Then create as many fly-out menus you like. Then go into setuo and uncheck the auto startup with windows. Restart windows and let the 2.0 ver start up with windows, and now you will see all the fly-out menus you just created with 1.9 ver in the 2.0 ver. Cool yeah?

Well that was all I learned on my 1st test drive of 2.0 It was late and I was getting very sleepy. I hope this info helps some of you, and I hope some of you can help me fix the system tray icon issue. Oh yeah the start menu icon works well on my dock.

TechDaddy out.

objectdock

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Dewie

Join Date 01/2010

+57

Thank you for your feedback for ObjectDock v2.0 beta. Impulse is required to download, install and update Stardock applications, as stated in the system requirements on the product page. The system tray icons look the way they do because they are being scaled up from their original (small) size. There is no easy fix for this, as the developers of the applications themselves have not created higher resolution icons for the system tray. To create animated icons for even a fraction of the possible tray icons would be far more work than a $20 dock program would see. Changing the icon to a higher resolution one will make it look nicer, but unless the icon you chose is animated, it will be static. Regarding the flyout menus, please keep in mind that this is a beta, so not all features have made their way in yet. The workaround is what you have already done: to install ObjectDock 1.90 and add the flyout menu to the dock. As ObjectDock v1.90 and ObjectDock v2.0 share their settings folder, this will apply to both.

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This should be a free download

Edit:

while in beta with all the users having to write there own scripts to finish out the userbility of the interface

Just sayin'

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i'm confused, in my beta version flyouts are working fine and listed right under add > docklet > flyout; right under the recycling bin.

for the tray icons, there's generally been the compromise that you could use the big pretty icon of your choice, while still having the normal sized original icon [that animates and changes] show up as well. sort of like how there's an arrow in the lower lefthand corner of a desktop icon for "shortcuts".

that option isn't in the settings, but the line showed up in the .ini file so i tried to see if it would allow me to find a workaround; apparently however it's just not functioning in the current release.

for the most part though, issues of "prettyness" are more or less in the hands of the skinners/users, as the icon designs are not really a part of the program itself. 90+% of the images used in OD are simply downloads that were released on wincustomize, and stardock has just bundled them into the software itself to get you started.

if you need to see the animations, i think you just have to bear with "ugly" for the time being. as many have said, this is more closely akin to an alpha release in that there are features that haven't been added back in yet, but we should expect to see them again.

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Dewie

Join Date 01/2010

+57

With the latest beta refresh of ObjectDock Plus 2, flyout menus are back in.

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A bit off topic, but what docks/icons are included with the beta? Are they the same ones in 1.9, or have more recent skins been added. Just curious since I can not download the beta.

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