Circle Dock – The Revolution Dock
All these while people who used to like docks, were stuck with 2 main types of docks, one was Stardock Objectdock, other one was RcketDock. I used to be a real fan of Objectdock but now there is a new opensource Circular dock, which amazes even a critic like me.
Regular Dock (Object Dock)
Circular Dock
Its very well designed, from the first look onwards you can say it was designed by a person who uses his PC a lot. Its very well arranged and nicely made and works fine with windows Vista and XP as well. Saying that I would like Its memory consumption to go down a bit because it uses around 11-14MB of RAM while Objectdock uses 5-6MB and Rocketdock uses 2-4MB, but hey let?s not start getting negative on this. This is a wonderful app full of eyecatching features and a lot of functionality and potential, and best of all it?s FREE!
What Circle Dock Allows You to Do:
- Drag and drop your files, folders, and shortcuts onto a circular or spiral dock.
- Rotate the dock with either your mouse wheel or the keyboard arrow keys.
- Change the image shown for the icons and change the skins (compatible with icons and skins for Rocket Dock, Object Dock, etc.)
- Ability to run the program from a portable USB memory stick and have the links in the dock point to the documents on the USB memory stick.
- Ability to synchronize the links on the dock with the files, folders, and shortcuts on your desktop or other folders in real-time.
- The dock appears where your mouse is by pressing a hotkey.
- Works on computers with multiple monitors.
The Idea Behind Circle Dock
The idea behind Circle Dock is that the dock should appear where your mouse is instead of you having to move your mouse to the dock like with other programs. This is accomplished by making the dock a circular or spiral shape so that it can be placed anywhere, even near the edge of the screen. The offscreen portions of the dock are easily reached by just scrolling with your mouse wheel or arrow keys.
A user defined hotkey combination is used to make the dock appear and disappear. By default, this combination is CTRL-WINDOWS KEY. You can change it in the settings area of the program.
Scrrenshots of Circle Dock
Circle Dock in Action
The Verdict
Although as I said earlier that I?m a huge fan of Objectdock, I will be switching to this wonderful application from now on. This is the future of dock, and a mind blowing idea. So I suggest that you embrace the future and this wonderful application. I love Circle Dock.
You know it’s inspired from Windows 7 don’t you? I had seen many simple DesktopX clones, and now – a real app!
All I can say is WOW! 
Gonna try it!
on August 20, 2008
Featuring stolen works from me!
on August 22, 2008
WOW stolen????? I dun get it? was it really stolen?
on August 23, 2008
@xazac, as I have told you in our private e-mail, I did not base Circle Dock on any of your work. You do not even have a program written, just a photoshopped picture, which is not valid to claim ownership of a concept. You are also claiming copyright for a concept that is in the public domain (pie menus).
Circle Dock 0.9.2 was inspired by http://desktop.google.com/plugins/i/windowsdock_stefanva.html?hl=en, which is under the GNU General Public License and uses that author’s skins/icons for the current Circle Dock look.
on August 23, 2008
so exactly whats the deal here is it stolen and who is the exact owner????
on August 23, 2008
There is nothing stolen here because the claim of copyright (by the poster above) is for the circular menu concept, which is in the public domain (aka pie menus). A person cannot claim copyright for something that is in the public domain and “copyright” is not an appropriate method to protect concepts. Copyright law is for works of art while patents are for noval ideas that are implemented. The key being that it is noval to an expert in the field and there has to be a working prototype, and not just a picture.
Also, you cannot patent ideas. Otherwise, everyone could patent every thought they ever came up with. What you can patent is a working implementation.
If you look at the Prior Art page on my website: http://circledock.wikidot.com/prior-art
I have listed some of the many places that I have read about circular menus. There are many more out there that I have not listed. These cases of prior art further invalidate any claims the poster above may have to rights for the circular menu concept. In some cases, they precede his claim by several years.
I was inspired by Stefan Vd’s work at http://desktop.google.com/plugins/i/windowsdock_stefanva.html?hl=en and was the basis of the current look of Circle Dock. It is an open source project under the GNU General Public License.
I hope this clears up any misunderstandings.
on August 24, 2008
Nice explanation thanks. Yeah it clears up a lot of misunderstandings.
on August 24, 2008
Both docks have a lot of problems… neither of the dock can control themselve while in execution…
on September 3, 2008
can you please help me i got windows vista and every time i open up cicle dock it opens with windows explorer do i need to download a file or somtething please help me
on November 4, 2008
to help you please specify your exact problem and pls give more details. First of all it need .net framework 3.5 do you have it installed?
then use the middle mouse btn to open it. or else goto settings and change its hotkey.
on November 4, 2008
very interesting……………………………………..
on May 8, 2009
I really like this dock, It is almost as useful as the standard taskbar, but it is more accessible than the taskbar. It’s the dock I’ve been looking for since I first saw a Windows Vista preview video around the end of 2005.
on August 12, 2009
Microsoft, listen to me, buy the developer of this thing, like you did with Mark Russnovich and make him implement it in Windows 8!!!
on November 23, 2009
Version 1.o is now available !!!
on January 7, 2010