v1.6 Beta with ridiculous number of improvements now up on SDC

x-Zoomin/Zoomout smoothness significantly enhanced, and is now adjustable! Find the new options in the "Quality & Performance" settings

x-Fixed a significant significant number of "little glitches" in behavior

x-Completely redone z-ordering system. See the new "interaction" area in zooming dock's positioning options. Should help eliminate problems people were seeing where dock would lose always-on-top.

x-Improved handling / awareness of full-screen applications

x-New mode: "keep on top, hiding off-screen for maximized applications", which makes the dock always on top except when a window is maximized, at which point it will automatically temporarily turn on autohide

x-Docks can now not only be left/right/center aligned, but anywhere in-between. See the new slider in zooming dock's positioning options

x-Brand new "Show Start Menu" functionality! Will show your existing startmenu/startpanel right next to the cursor when you click it. Add one by right clicking dock and choosing "Add -> New Start Menu Entry"

x-Background code *significantly* improved. Should no longer ever be able to see the background not behave properly / leave gaps / etc.

x-New option available to turn on "proportionate stretching" for backgrounds

x-Added better extension handling. Not only can mailto:// and http:// now be used to bring up your apps associated with those protocols (email, web) but also this works with any other protocol as well (aim://, bittorrent, etc)

x-Dialog flow / layout improved for zooming docks

x-Ability to export backgrounds added to the DockZip packaging format. Try this feature today by right clicking the dock and choosing "Pack images for sharing"

x-When packing up icons, you can now reliably drag dock items on to the "packager" dialog, and the icon associated with that item will automatically be added to the package you're creating

x-Can now drag/drop "Internet" and "Email" shortcuts from start panel into dock

x-Dramatically improved behavior during right click menus on zooming docks. When you right click and the dock's zooming locks in position, if you click/right-click on another item ObjectDock will now correctly select the item that your cursor was over at the time, not what i would be after the zoom lock is released. Similarly, if you begin dragging an item while locked, the program will behave appropriately instead of its prior very unpredictable behavior.

x-Improved dock's ability to judge what maximum size it should be. Dock will now exactly fill the screen when you set it to be as large as possible, and it will properly maintain this as you add/remove items.

x-Colorizing a background now also colorizes the indicators you've selected to use

x-Improved autohide ability in general. Also, added ability for autohide to give activation back to the window that had it if an autohidden dock gets activated temporarily and then hides.

x-Drag & drop smoothness enhanced

x-Significant improvements when using an extension only in shortcuts. If you now create a shortcut with ".doc" to open your word processor, ".mp3" to bring up your mp3 player, etc, the shortcut's icon will update automatically upon next load if the association changes. Also, if you append "icon" or "file" to the end of your extension, ObjectDock will use the icon associated with that individual filetype for the icon rather than the program used to run its icon.

x-When using extension-only in shortcuts, the item's title will now automatically update to the name of the application, not just its filename.

x-improved delete-item animation so that there is no longer a delay when you delete something from the dock

x-improved shortcuts so that the dock longer pauses for a moment when you run something

x-clicking empty space directly above/below a zooming dock that is still part of the background (e.g. a shadow) no longer causes the dock item below it to get selected. similarly, right clicking that area will bring up options for the dock itself, not the item below where you clicked.

And that above, is a very-much-so partial list    Ton of new stuff soooo while I've tested the crap out of it, there's plenty of 'new' to go wrong. Let me know of any problems! v1.6 beta can be found on Stardock Central, currently for registered users only. Enjoy!

-Jeff Bargmann
ObjectDock Developer