I've compiled a new version of Circle Dock to try to solve these mysterious crashes. I have compiled Circle Dock 0.9.1 to be used with the .Net Framework 3.5 instead of the older 2.0 version so this should help with stability for those that are having trouble. This also means that you must now have the .Net Framework 3.5 or later installed on your computer to use the program. Instructions are on the download page: http://circledock.wikidot.com/download-circle-dock

Let me know if this new version helps out.

I have reports from some users that the program crashes when they try to add a icon/link to the dock and no useful error message pops up. Others aren't having this problem (like me) so I'll have to investigate this. It is really baffling me what is wrong. If someone here has the same problem, please download the source code from http://circledock.wikidot.com and run it using Visual Basic Express 2008 (free). Then, when the program crashes, you'll know where it is crashing and what the error message is.

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YouTube video of the program: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bXbj_LdS80

Download the Program and Source Code at: http://circledock.wikidot.com/


This is my second submission for the Donation Coder Programming Contest. It is the world's first open source circular and spiral dock.


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.

If you have a mouse with extra buttons or you want to make one of your mouse buttons activate the dock, I recommend you use the program from http://www.highrez.co.uk/downloads/XMouseButtonControl.htm and use it to remap your mouse buttons. This makes it very convenient to toggle Circle Dock.

The current version of Circle Dock is 0.9. It is not feature complete when compared to the full fledged docks out there, such as Rocket Dock and Object Dock, but this program was coded in under 2 weeks for a programming competition at www.donationcoder.com so there was not enough time to investigate every standard dock feature and code it. As the program develops, more standard dock features will be added.