As promised in another thread (https://forums.stardock.com/452133), here is my personal list of bugs – as far as i remember it since this spans over several years of unfixed issues and it is most likely NOT complete yet; i will add stuff when i remember or experience some more (one gets used to bugs standing for all this time so i have to see what still is there). Back then i thought it is enough to report something and not having to write it down somewhere also. Silly me. For more background information please visit the mentioned thread.
Near everyone of this has been reproduced by the Stardock support and has an internal ticket as far as i have been told by support. Everything is also tested on several different systems, all with very potent hardware, always up-to-date and well maintanenced and also tested by their support tool. If someone has a suggestion to fix anything i would love to hear it! The systems were/are running Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 (x64) and now Windows 8/8.1 Pro "Update" (x64).
Maybe it is also a good thing to make a collection of all open bugs together. This could be easier for the developers to track them and we hopefully will see an approvement one day. I will update this as far as something changes. However, the statement below that "Stardock cannot do any better" by them does leave some open questions ...
Bugs:
01. Boot delay: ObjectDock slows down "booting" (meaning when the desktop is already shown and until the system responds normally; so, "system availability" is more correct) seriously. This has been slightly better with the newer versions, but not much. Especially when the weather docklet is on a dock, this is even worse (maybe because of the internet lookup – and, no, this is a 50 Mbit/s cable connection wich is blazing fast).
After further and more complex investigations i came to the conclusion that this most likely is caused by Windows 8/8.1 and its way of booting and starting the system and how it gives feedback about its state to the user. Quit not absolutely sure but closer than the other guess.
02. Network links: When linking to a place on a LAN, for example a simple folder, and you do NOT set that folder link to "Show folder in a menu" in the links settings, it takes up to several minutes (depending on network timeout i guess) until the link responds when clicked on the dock. Setting it to the folder view is the only workaround i found so far.
03. Tray icons: Several tray icons just don't work on a dock. Meaning, that if used (clicked) on the Windows taskbar, everything is fine. When right-clicked on a dock, in some cases at least the context menu opens still, but most menu entries are not clickable and don't get highlighted on mouseover. An example application would be cFosSpeed (www.cfos.de).
Addendum: cFosSpeed's tray icon context menu works now with a newer version. This means, this one is most likely not an OD bug. All other problems refering to this stayed the same of course. Another example is uTorrent but there is also the question if the application is causing the problems when trying to oopen/close by double-clicking the tray icon. A yet better and easier example for not working icons is AIMP (the media player). When it is set to open/close by double-click (default behaviour) and started, the first time double-clicking its tray icon on a dock does simply nothing. With the second and each other double-click, it works fine. Closing ObjectDock and using the Windows taskbar/tray immediately works and does so every time. Another example for a broken tray icon when on a dock is uTorrent. When minimized to the tray, in 8 out of 10 cases you are not able to re-open it the same way and do have to use the context menu instead. No problem with the Windows taskbar tray itself.
04. Previews: When setting a dock to show running applications and let them have full previews that show the content as miniatures of the program/folder on the dock, this has several bugs. Besides some performance and crash problems that mostly seem to be fixed, this sometimes leaves the application icon overlay on the dock even an application is closed, causing it to overlap with the next preview appearing (reproducable with Adobe applications for example). Also, when the dock is closed and started again, the previews are not refreshed automatically as they surely should. Sometimes it is enough to minimize and re-open a program/folder, sometimes it must the closed completely and re-opened. Screenshots added:
Image 01: The previews on one of the dock top center on my second screen. I have Firefox open and have closed Adobe InDesign just a few moments before. As you can see, the icon is still there and the dock behaves as if there is something else open (no, it is not; InDesign IS closed, no task still running or such). Also, both are positioned as if there were two applications running.
Image 02: I opened a second Application now (Adobe Photoshop). The Photoshop icon is overlayed by the In Design icon and in the middle is a space as if three applications are running (what is not wrong). Mostly, the icons do not overlap but one is bottom left on the preview and one is bottom right where it should be.
Addendum: This somewhat seems to be a little better with Adobe Creative Cloud 2014 so there might be a cause by the application and not the dock. Needs further investigation ...
05. AppImages.ini: This file is a crap collector. Every time you add a link to the dock that points to an executable, it saves a path. However, every time you remove something from the dock, it still keeps it. If you are backing up those files wich hold your configuration, this file is growing continouusly by abandoned path entries.
06. Focus: Several problems with the application focus and the dock. Sometimes, application lose focus when the dock is hovered (activated by mouse-over); other times, the dock itself cannot be hovered over an application with focus. Especially with several browser windows (hardware-acceleration problem?). Often it occurs with just normal windows or other applications in fullscreen or just maximized. Seems that the "sorting" of applications sometimes is messed up.
07. "This PC" link: When using a link to what formerly was "Workplace" (before Win8) and now is known as "This PC" (or such; loosely translating from the german version) on the dock and right-clicking it, one will see a trimmed down context menu. Therefore, one should hold shift and right-clicking when wanting to access the full entries from dock and OS. Those do show up, but selecting "Properties" for eaxample just shows the link properties and not the OS ones like over Control Panel -> System. This works on Start8 as it should if there is a "This PC" link on the Start Menu.
08. Link lables: When bringing the dock on top with mouseover when anything like an application or folder is maximized, the titles of the links are not shown. Correctly, when only the desktop is behind the dock, one sees the names of the links displayed over the docks (or dock tab labels as in my case) when hovering them with the mouse. For example a link to "This PC" would show the same text as a name. When something else is maximized, the dock is brought to top but those text label are not.
Seems to be fixed with update 2.20.0.850 beta.
09. Collapsing Start Menu: The Start Menu, wether used by a ObjectDock docklet or Start8 over ObjectDock often collapses in several cases before one can click the wanted entry. Most often this happens when trying to shut down or restart by hovering the bottom of the screen with the mouse (in my case) to bring ObjectDock to the foreground (because hidden), clicking the Start Menu docklet (wich open Start8 in my case) and selecting the arrow beside the "Shut down"-entry. Most likely everything collapses here (dock and Start Menu) and one has to repeat. Often this fails permanently and one has to shut down by other means. This also happens when the Start Menu/Start8 opens and the dock returns to its hidden state, wich will result in the Start Menu/Start8 menu to also collapse. This is VERY annoying!
10. Tray icon missing: When using tray icons on a docklet (i use a small, separate dock as a tray replacement) it sometimes happens that some tray icons are not remembered. This happens for sure wich the tray icon of Trillian (www.trillian.im), for example. When telling the dock to show this tray icon, it does so until next restart. Then there is an entry of an inactive (but checked) and an active (but unchecked) tray icon in the selection dialogue for the SAME program! This is alos represented in the corresponding INI file. With every try, the INI contains one more entry. It seems that the method by wich ObjectDock identifies or remembers tray icons fails in those cases.
11. Window sorting: I am not completely sure if this is caused by the dock or Windows itself, but since it works in all other applications by now, i guess it is the dock itself. This went worse since Windows 8 (and went more worse on 8.1/"Update"): when using a dock as taskbar replacement, one needs it to sort Windows and their front/back status. But every now and then it fails at this, resulting in the maximized application in front not allowing to bring the dock back to focus wich keeps the user from accessing his "taskbar" (replacement dock). Especially when the dock is hidden by default, this becomes even more annoying. Of course, Alt+Tab still works and systems without ObjectDock also. It just fails to manage the focus correctly. This may be a bit vague for a description, but i will try to do better if a developer ever gets interested in this thread ...
12. (by M4he, post #10): When JPEGView (freeware, link) is started, it is initially not displayed in OD (as a running application). It only shows up, after something else happens on the dock: a new application is started or any window is minimized (while the display of minimized windows is enabled) so that the dock gets refreshed.
13. Hide Windows taskbar: This option often does not work correctly. From Windows 7 on, it sometimes is normally shown together with the dock even when set on an freshly booted machine. Extremly annoying when the dock also sits at the bottom of the screen where the taskbar normally is. Also, way more often, the taskbar is shown only as a line (hidden) and dissappears completely only when hoevered. If it is not hovered, it stays. In rare cases, the whole system must be restarted to hide the taskbar (in some others, it is enough to restart the dock).
14. Label fonts: When changing the settings for the font used on the labels of a tabbed dock, this does nothing. Even affter restarting the whole dock. This might be a settings problem of some kind, but i tried nearly everything to fix this to no result.
15. Link to "This PC": When setting a link to "This PC" (formerly "Workplace") on the dock, this link does not work after several occassions on Windows 8 and up. First, after reinstalling Windows, even with the same versions and without changing anything. This especially happens when a newer version of Windows is installed (for example Windows 8 to 8.1 and now "Update") and lately it even happened after several Windows updates or even without anything. Sometimes, when clicking the link, it just does nothing at all; doing a new link to "This PC" on the dock immediately makes it work again. On Windows 7 this was never a problem and the link was working all the years, so there is a chance that this is caused by changes in Windows itself.
Suggestions:
01. Start menu: The location of the start menu is somewhat senseless since it opens over the dock and not bottom left on the screen the dock is on as it does on the taskbar or with the Windows key. I have been told this was a suggested feature. However, it should be at last configurable.
02. Stack docklet: This has been wanted by far by the most users and has been requested that often i just would like to show that i support that idea. However, there should be some kind of a toolkit or better API for docklets or just some more default ones coming with the dock. There have been tons of good ideas around here that need no more introduction.
03. (by M4he, post #10): Option to add an adjustable horizontal spacing between icons for a whole dock. (The icons are too close together for some skins I think)