Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 15th Mar 2007 14:59 UTC, submitted by dumbkiwi
"If you run KDE, you aren't just stuck with the standard 'kicker' panel to operate as your app launcher and taskbar. There are a bunch of nice panel replacements that will spice up your desktop nicely. The ones that I've used and tested are kooldock, kxdocker and kiba-dock. So, what do these docks do, and what's cool about them?"
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Member since:
2005-11-16
Some of these 'dockers' certainly look very nice, adding cool cosmetic features that even the Mac OS X Dock lacks. However, it isn't the Dock's eye candy that makes it an efficient tool. Along with its versatility, and the elegant way it combines with Mac features (like the ability to hide apps), the best thing about the Dock is its consistency.
With the Dock in Mac OS X you know what will happen when you click on an icon, drag and drop to it, or access its menus. You click on a running application icon to bring all its windows to the front, select individual open windows from its menu, drag a document to an app icon to load it, etc. I'm sure someone can find an exception, but for the most part the Dock is wonderfully predictable.
The same isn't true of the Dock clones for other platforms. No matter how closely they copy the aesthetics of the Mac OS X Dock, the running apps themselves prevent important features from being implemented, and add inconsistent window management behaviour.
If non-Mac users are judging the Mac OS X Dock based on the clones available for Windows/Linux, it wouldn't surprise me if they viewed it as all style and no substance. When the novelty value of their fancy effects wears off, the dock clones I've tried offer vastly inferior usability.
Personally I think that the Mac OS X Dock is excellent, easily better than any other taskbar/dock I've used, including the NeXTSTEP Dock and RISC OS Iconbar. Yet I wouldn't bother using any of those Linux Dock clones, or similar utilities available for Windows. They're missing too much of what makes the OS X Dock great to really offer much over the various other taskbars and panels. After using the real thing, extra eye candy just isn't enough to make up for all the lost functionality.