Stardock has released an update to its popular freeware dock program -- ObjectDock.

ObjectDock 0.99 (still in beta) is a program that combines task managing and program launching into a single "dock" that can be placed anywhere on the screen and customized to look and feel very differently from system to system.

Docks are a powerful UI convention made popular first on NeXTStep and later found on other OSes such as OS/2 and more recently MacOS X.

ObjectDock 0.99 is a significant departure from past versions as Stardock has begun to try to take the dock on its own path.  Apple recently shut down development of a popular dock program called y'Z dock which closely emulated the MacOS X "Aqua" dock.  Stardock intends ObjectDock to stand on its own with the goal of being the most versatile and customizeable dock available to meet a wide variety of user goals.

New in version 0.99 is:

+ Docklets. Users can now create their own docklets to put on the dock. Docklets are basically plugins that can display informatiom (weather, time, disk space, RSS feeds, etc.).

+ Dock item backgrounds. You can now control what the background of a dock item looks like.

+ A host of new effects for the attention animation (i.e. say an instant message has arrived, the IM icon can bounce or spin or rock).

+ Suport for attention items. When a running task is on, a graphic shows up under the icon letting you know it's in use.

+ Control of whether a new instance or existing instance of a program should be launched when a program is clicked on.

+ Lots of polish and performance tweaks to make it faster and easier to use.

+ Reduced memory usage

Stardock expects to release ObjectDock 1.0 in September as a freeware program. Stardock also makes the popular desktop extension suite, Object Desktop which can be found here: (www.objectdesktop.com).

You can download ObjectDock at www.objectdock.com.