Quickly Launch Applications in Windows with RocketDock
Posted on January 28, 2008 at 7:10 am
The start menu, quick launch and desktop icons are the most well known ways to launch applications and files in Windows. If you take a look at Apple’s operating system, the OS X, you will notice that Windows lacks the “dock” - an animated application launcher that displays file and folder shortcuts as well as minimized items and windows. The dock offers better productivity, quick access to applications from an intuitive interface and scores high in term of coolness too!
If you are a Windows user, you can enjoy the same experience with RocketDock. It is almost a carbon copy of the Apple’s dock and it will help you to launch your Windows applications in an instant .
First things first, download RocketDock, quick! Once you have installed it successfully, launch RocketDock by clicking on its desktop icon. RocketDock will launch with some default icons such as My Computer, Control Panel, My Network Settings and a few others. Next, I suggest that you check out RocketDock’s settings by clicking on the “Dock Settings” icon. This will help you to determine basic things such as the location where the dock should appear, dock and icons size, animated effects and more. I believe that the best location to position RocketDock is on top right of the screen, so it won’t clash with your scroll bars, Windows menu or desktop icons.
RocketDock Features
RocketDock offers a huge of amount of tweaks. Here are some of RocketDock built-in features:
- Animated dock effects - icons will grow bigger on mouse-over, bounce on mouse-click (icon attention effects) and more. To make it prettier, set the “Icon quality” to high.
- Extreme icon tweaking - add, show icon labels, set opacity, set size, hover effect and change zoom icon size. You can even lock all the icons so it can’t be moved / deleted by accident.
- Minimized Windows support - Windows will drop nicely to the dock once minimized.
- Live windows preview (Vista only) - minimized Windows icons will show a live preview of what’s inside the actual applications! In other version of Windows, a small screen shot will represent a minimized Windows.
- Running application indicators - a running application will be marked with a black arrow-head facing downwards. Click on a running app icon on the dock and the related application Windows will be maximized.
- Drag and drop support - you can arrange icons based on your preferences and drag and drop icons from your desktop to the dock to minimize clutter.
- Skin support - choose a pre-installed skin for your dock or download more RocketDock skins here .
- Multi monitor support.
- Auto-hide - you can even set the auto-hide duration and delay time from the “Behavior” preferences.
- Screen position - set the location of the dock on top, left, right or bottom. For maximum MacOS effect, choose the bottom screen position, auto-hide your Windows task bar and hide all icons on the desktop!
- Docklets support - a docklet is a mini-application that runs inside the dock itself. Imagine it as a clock / weather widget inside the dock.
- Windows auto-startup support.
Whether you are an Apple fan boy switching to Windows, a freeware geek or just a casual Windows user looking for something useful to supercharge your desktop, RocketDock is an awesome application launcher that will benefit everyone. I use it myself because I can’t stand the amount of icons cluttering my desktop. From my experience, RocketDock performs admirably even at its maximum animated settings , providing cool effects and most importantly, quick access to all my applications. Try RocketDock and be cool today!
This is a guest post written by Syahid A. from TechMalaya.com.
Tags: application launcher, launch application, launcher, rocketdock, docklets, free application launcher, windows launcher
» Filed Under Free Software Downloads
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You can also extend the versatility of RocketDock by using MenuApp to create drop-down menus below your RocketDock icons. I have RocketDock icons for Security, Utilities, Graphics, etc and use MenuApp to create a drop down list of applications below these. Great for clearing the clutter of icons on the desktop. Here’s the MenuApp link:
http://www.desktopapps.co.uk/menuApp.html
It looks like a handy application. Will save me some desktop space. Giving it a try right now.
awesome application…but can you guide me in reinstalling this application?….It seems that I lost the dock settings icon on the toolbar and I don’t know how to retrieve it. I wanted to reinstall but it keeps telling me that “program is running”…i don’t know how to exit rocket dock to be able to uninstall….I wonder if a quick restore will do?
Hi Geneva, the program is probably still installed, just missing the icon, so you don’t have to uninstall it. Go to Start, then Programs, and see if it shows up in the list of Programs, under Object Dock, or RocketDock, etc. You can then drag the icon back to your desktop.
It’s missing one VERY important feature. You cannot create groups. For example, a way to place multimedia shortcuts into one “Multimedia” folder. This would give you a way to organize shortcuts and not take up alot of room on the dock. As it is now, each shortcut takes up a space on the dock and you cannot create a folder on the dock to place shortcuts in it.
THIS is a deal breaker for me and why I do NOT think the program is as great as everyone makes it out to be!!!!……Too bad, it has such potential!