Big Thank you and some minor contribution

[gr33nf4c3]

I really need to thank you for developing Circle Dock. Using it is so neat and easy, after only one day of using it I can hardly remember how I could have done without that  It's also cool that you can run various instances of it. For anyone who likes to fiddle around with things, try StrokeIt (Freeware mouse gesture app) in conjunction with Circle Dock. That also ends the problem of losing focus when pushing the middle mouse button plus you can run various instances at once and have all of them appear and disappear in no time!

Anyway, since there didn't seem to be a german language file I decided to make one as a little thank you!
Keep up the good work! I'm looking forward to the progress on this project!

(Now all I still need is a Circle Dock for task switching  )

[VideoInPicture]

Thanks for the translation. I hear that using StrokeIt with Circle Dock on a tablet PC / UMPC is really useful.

[gr33nf4c3]

I'm using it on my standard notebook and I absolutely love it. I wonder why this hasn't been done before. I dare say that this is the one application that is going to revolutionize my personal way of using a PC.

Now if you'd include the circular task manager, I'd be glad to pay for this  Come on, make it happen! 

Edit: I know, it's not really something that should bother you, but do you think there would be a way to make CircleDock work with Virtual Desktop Applications like DexPot?
Right now, the situation is as follows:
You are on say the second (virtual) desktop and want CircleDock to appear. You push the according buttons and it does appear. On the first (real) desktop though. No you can juggle windows between various desktops and so can you do with circle dock, the only problem being that only the selected part gets thrown to the other desktop, as in you klick on the ring and hit the keys to move it to desktop 2 and indeed it goes there. It's just that the buttons and items stay on the first desktop.
As I said, I suppose this might not really be in the center of your interest- I thought I would share, though.

[Rostam]

I know, it's not really something that should bother you, but do you think there would be a way to make CircleDock work with Virtual Desktop Applications like DexPot?
Right now, the situation is as follows:
You are on say the second (virtual) desktop and want CircleDock to appear. You push the according buttons and it does appear. On the first (real) desktop though. No you can juggle windows between various desktops and so can you do with circle dock, the only problem being that only the selected part gets thrown to the other desktop, as in you klick on the ring and hit the keys to move it to desktop 2 and indeed it goes there. It's just that the buttons and items stay on the first desktop.

-gr33nf4c3 (September 26, 2008, 04:50 PM)

that's kind of interesting actually. I use VirtuaWin for my virtual desktops, and i don't have any problems. The dock appears on whichever desktop I am currently on. And say I'm on desktop 1, and CD is open, then I switch to desktop 2, CD is on that one also. VirtuaWin seems to do that with some other programs, too (particularly: steam). I'm not sure what that means in terms of changing CD to work with DexPot, though.

[VideoInPicture]

I think there is a difference in technique between what DexPot and VirtuaWin take to create their virtual desktops and is probably the reason why one of them works while the other has trouble. I'm suspecting that DexPot simply moves windows around whereas VirtuaWin actually creates a separate user space for the process/programs to run in. Either way, this is something that I want to fix but haven't completely figured out how the other major docks have done it.

Circle Dock is composed of parent (the background and centre orb) and child windows (the icon links). What DexPot appears to be doing is moving the parent window but not the child windows. Now for a normal program, the icon links would be child controls instead of child windows of the background and centre orbs. But, in order to render the alpha-blended graphics for a dock, you have to use the WS_EX_LAYERED window style. This style setting is both a blessing and a curse because it allows you to create alpha-blended graphics but totally breaks the normal programming practices and controls and a person would normally use. If the icon links were child controls, we would have no problem with DexPot but they do not render if done this way. There are many quirks with WS_EX_LAYERED (I don't know why Microsoft implemented alpha-blended graphics this way, many programmers ask why) and I have had to use some hacks to get Circle Dock to display properly. If I do find a way of making the icon links child controls, I will change the code over because it would make some aspects much simpler to program and make the Circle Dock more efficient.

[gr33nf4c3]

Thanks for the excurse! Becoming a software engineer myself (although not as advanced as you guys seem to be  ) I really dig getting to know all this.

On a sidenote: It might be a known issue but sometimes CircleDock produces a funny bug on my rig- See attachment for details. It works as intended, only the background Image appears somewhere else.
Funny thing though: If I run any of the applications from my App-dock, the problem goes away whereas on my game dock, the problem stays until restart of the application.

[VideoInPicture]

Yeah, a couple of others have reported that and it only seems to happen if you load up Circle Dock when your computer boots but goes away when you restart the application. I'll play around with it and see what Windows is doing to Circle Dock at boot up.