Cairo-Dock in English!

Cairo-Dock 3.2 release!

fabounet — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 18:07:41 +0000

Cairo-Dock is a pretty, fast and customizable desktop interface. You can see it as a good alternative/addition to Unity, Gnome-Shell, Xfce-panel, KDE-panel, etc
After 6 months of hard work, a new version of Cairo-Dock is available.

The Default-panel theme on a Cairo-Dock session

Here is a quick tour of the main news:

General

Multi-screen support has been improved.
The new applet Screenshot allows you to take screenshot (it's purpose is to replace gnome-screenshot and its annoying effects).
The new plug-in Sound-Effects adds sound effects to some actions on the icons.
Distant folders (samba, FTP, etc) and encrypted disks are now handled in the Shortcuts applet.

Environment support

Cairo-Dock can run on any desktop, and is a good addition to the classic shells (Unity, Gnome-Shell, KDE, etc) or it can even replace them advantageously.
This version brings further support of the classic shells:

Gnome-Shell support: the dock can now use some abilities of Gnome-shell (windows Exposé, desktops Exposé), as it already does with Compis and Kwin.
GDM support for user switching has also been added, as it already has for ldm, kdm, etc
The dock now supports Systemd (Fedora, Arch, etc) for the session management within the Logout applet
All the Unity indicators are now supported through a generic Indicator applet (Printer-menu, Bluetooth-menu, etc)
The Note-taking applet can now work without Tomboy or Gnote.
And the dock now compiles and runs fine on FreeBSD.

Windows of the same application can be displayed together by the dock, here on Gnome3

Theming

Cairo-Dock has great theming features, and they have been enhanced:

More themes are available, more desklet decorations too

One of the new themes available, with 2 desklets (Clock and Note-taking).
When the dock is hidden, important icons stay visible and are transparent to clicks

All icons can have a background
The default theme is better integrated with KDE

default theme under KDE, here on Fedora 18

And of course, countless bug-fixes and improvements all over the code.
As you can see, this is a really big version, and if you like the project, please feel free to contribute. Donations are possible, and any help about the translations, theming or third-party applets is very welcome

How to install:

It's easy to install Cairo-Dock, simply follow the wiki, depending on your distribution: http://glx-dock.org/ww_page.php?p=Accueil&lang=en#0-Installation
Note that for Fedora users, we now have our own repository !

More details

For a complete changelog, see here.

For even more themes, have a look at the theme manager, your favourite search engine, DeviantArt, Gnome-Look, etc.

A screencast (3.1)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2isiqVEcaio

For Paypal, please have a look on the button which here is on the top left!

Cairo-Dock 3.1 is now available!

matttbe — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 13:57:23 +0000

Cairo-Dock is a pretty, fast and customizable desktop interface. You can see it as a good alternative/addition to Unity, Gnome-Shell, Xfce-panel, KDE-panel, etc
Here is a short summary of the improvements and new features in this version 3.1.
(For more details about the Cairo-Dock sessions and more screenshots, please have a look at the previous article: here)

This version brings a tight integration with Unity: several indicators have been added (Sync-Menu, Print-Menu, and the latest Messaging-Menu), and the Launcher API is now supported. This allows applications to display useful information directly on the launchers (e.g.: the progression of a copy/download on the Nautilus/Firefox icon, the number of update on the Update-manager icon, all Gtk bookmarks on the 'Home' launcher, etc.). Note that Quick-list menu entries are also supported since the 2.4 version.

.

.

Following the same idea, progress-bars have been added in several applets (for instance, the Transmission applet can now display the current download progress). Progress bars are also available in the Dbus API (in Python or any other language), and are very customizable.

The configuration window has been improved (both simple and advanced modes). Especially, all configuration windows have been merged into a single one.

The Recent Events applets, which lets you quickly access the recently used files, now also presents the recently used applications.
A right-click on a launcher will also present you the recent files that you can open with this launcher.

The Twitter applet now supports Identi.ca (thanks to Eduardo).

For a complete changelog, see here.

These screenshots have been made with the 'Default-Panel' theme available in the Theme manager, but please remember that Cairo-Dock is fully customisable. You can easily change its look, simply have a look at the theme manager (3 new themes have been added), your favourite search engine, DeviantArt, Gnome-Look, etc.

If you like the project, please be nice and support it by reporting bugs or ideas, making applets, articles, videos, themes, or donations. Thank you !

A screencast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2isiqVEcaio

Fabounet (Fabrice Rey) and Matttbe (Matthieu Baerts) for the Cairo-Dock team.

Cairo-Dock 3 is now available!

matttbe — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 15:01:29 +0000

Cairo-Dock 3.0 brings a slick user-friendly desktop interface.

Cairo-Dock sits in the centre of your desktop, allowing you to monitor and control your favourite apps: music players, chat messengers, twitter, torrents downloaders, RSS feeds, calendar/tasks, weather, mail checkers, etc, and a powerful taskbar.

It presents you the information and controls in form of docks, desktop widgets and panels, and lets you customize them as much as you may wish, so that your desktop will be definitely unique and fits your needs.

Customization is very easy, and a lot of themes are already available.

Strong points:
Unlike some new "modern" shells, Cairo-Dock comes with the usual features you expect on a desktop

A powerful taskbar that lets you group and reorder windows in the dock, close and open a new instance in one click, switch between windows of the same application using the mouse scroll, etc.

Empathy windows are groups in a sub-dock.

A click on the main icon triggers the Scale (Compiz/Kwin), a mouse scroll switches between the 2 windows

An Applications Menu, containing all your programs ordered by categories, that you can add inside the dock with a simple drag and drop

A classic and yet efficient way to get all your installed apps in 1 click

A simple calendar which lets you manage events and warns you before the date.

Clicking on the Clock applet brings the calendar ; double-clicking on a day lets you enter events for this day

Switch between users, lock your screen when you go off your PC, hibernate or restart, all these basic actions are in 1 applet.

Clicking on the Logout applet brings a menu with all the actions ; it will also warn you if your system needs to be restarted after an update

A powerful switcher, to switch between desktops, but also between windows; it displays the windows present on your different desktops, lets you rename them to have a better organisation, and provides a quick switch between windows to improve your work efficiency.

Middle-clicking on the switcher brings a menu that lists all your windows, sorted by desktops.
But you can also trigger the Expose or the Scale (Compiz/Kwin) from the applet, and you can place these actions on right-click, middle-click or to a shortkey

A list of all your devices (hard-disks, USB storages), and bookmarked folders (the same as in Nautilus).

All the volumes are listed on top, with free space indication, and all the bookmarks are listed at the bottom.
You can eject a device by middle-clicking on its icon

Integration of the Ubuntu indicators: one of the best creation of Ubuntu recently is the indicators, and Cairo-Dock allows you to have them inside your docks.

The Messaging Menu regroups mails and chat messages, as well as your current status, and warns you when a new message arrives

The Sound Menu lets you control the sound and the music player; mouse-scrolling on the icon changes the sound volume

Instant access to recent events, including: recent documents, recently watched videos or listened musics, recently visited web pages, etc

The recent events dialogue; you can search for a given word, and choose the application you want to use to open the file.
You can also delete the history to protect your privacy

Various applets are available, from the clipboard history which records text you select/copy to applet that instantly shares online any file you drop on it.

The Weather applet displays the current conditions and the forecast in a sub-dock

The docks are entirely controllable from the keyboard

Press a shortkey to trigger the keyboard navigation, then press the number of the icon you want to select.
You can also navigate with the arrows, trigger right/middle clicks, etc.
Several applets also offer shortkeys for their main actions
(ex.: <Super>+L to lock the screen, <Alt>+F1 to pop up the Applications menu, etc)

And many other nice features like smart auto-hide, 3D animations, placement on any side of the screen, clipboard history, stack of files, weather forecast, system monitor, etc
Cairo-dock works with any Window Manager, runs on any hardware (even old netbooks), can use the graphic card to be very smooth or a fallback mode if the drivers don't support it, is very well integrated with the most common desktop environments, and is actively developed.

That means you can use Cairo-Dock as a shell with your current configuration, your current apps, your current theme; you don't need to change everything, or even learn new paradigm. Make the dock works as you want, not the opposite

Here is 4 differents actions in one screenshot

If you like it, feel free to contribute (development, news, third-party applets (coded in Python, Bash, Vala, Ruby, Mono, etc.), translations, themes and donations are very welcome ! ).
=> How to help us

A screencast:

without annotations:

with annotations:

PS: If you want to have the same desktop, simply install Cairo-Dock 3.0.0 (from our repository) on Ubuntu 12.04, log-out and log-in in a Cairo-Dock session:

(screenshot from iloveubuntu.net++
(if you already have installed Cairo-Dock, you can load the 'Default-Panel' theme -> Right click on the dock / Cairo-Dock / Configure / Themes)

GLX-2.3 released !

fabounet — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 00:52:37 +0000

After 6 months of hard work, GLX-Dock 2.3 is finally released!

This version is a huge step towards a credible alternative to other shells (Unity, Gnome3, KDE4, XFCE, etc).

Integration into the Desktop

We mainly focused on the integration of the dock with the main components of the Linux/BSD Desktop:

Integration of the Compiz and Kwin effects

when 2 or more windows of the same application are grouped inside the dock, clicking on the main icon will trigger the Exposé of these windows.
Also, the Switcher and the ShowDesktop applets can trigger the Exposé of all desktops, all windows, or the Widget Layer (where you can by the way place the Cairo-Dock's applets).

Integration of Zeitgeist

Zeitgeist is a new service that keeps traces of your recent activities.
GLX-Dock now has an applet dedicated to it; it lets you browse your last visited web pages, documents, videos, musics, etc.
It also adds to the launchers menu the recent files that can be opened with this launcher
(for instance, on right-clicking on the Gimp launcher, you will have a quick access to the recent images)

The Recent-Events dialog

Integration of the application indicators

Finally, GLX-Dock has a nice Notification area (also called systray), which can display all the indicators directly inside the dock.
MeMenu and MessagingMenu are also supported.

The new Notification Area

Integration of many applications with "smart launchers"

These are small applets that can talk to the program, and display several information.
For instance, the "Transmission" applet will display the download rate, and let you see the current downloads status.
Again the integration of other desktops was taken into account, since we also have an applet for KTorrent and Deluge.
Various advanced menus can also be used inside the dock: GnoMenu, MintMenu, Cardapio, and (again for KDE users) Lancelot.

The Transmission applet running

Integration of UbuntuOne

the "Drop and Share" applet lets you share any kind of files over the Internet, by simply droppong them onto the icon.
It now supports UbuntuOne, as well as DropBox and many other sites.

Integration of the restart signal

The Logout applet warns you when the computer needs to be restarted.

The new API

Sign of its maturity, GLX-Dock now has its own framework to manipulate icons, docks, desklets, OpenGL animations, and so on.
It also provides a simple and yet powerful API in a lot of languages, to write applets very easily (Python, Ruby, Vala, Mono, Bash, etc).
A lot of new applets have been developped by contributors thanks to this API:
- a "Quote of the Day" applet
- a Translator applet
- a lot of "smart launchers"
- and many more are to come (Facebook applet, LifeArea applet, etc)

Other new features and improvements

We can also note the following new features:
- better menus layout, easier to use.
- a new configuration window, where you can configure all the launchers/applets/docks/desklets at once.
- CPU and fan speed monitoring in the System-Monitor applet
- the image Slider loads much faster
- better dialogs placement
- new themes
- ...

The items configuration window

The MeeGo theme: clear and efficient!

Installation

GLX-Dock runs on any desktop environment, on virtually any machine (including small netbooks and 8 years old PC).
To install it, please follow the wiki (we have our own repository):
http://www.glx-dock.org/ww_page.php?p=By%20distributions&lang=en

If you want to get the latest features, our weekly repository is available for any Debian-based distribution:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cairo-dock-team/weekly
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cairo-dock cairo-dock-plug-ins

GLX-Dock 2.3 enters beta

fabounet — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 02:11:38 +0000

3 months after its previous release, GLX-Dock 2.3 enters beta !

What's new?

This version was the occasion to refactor a fair amount of the core.
GLX-Dock is now built on top of libgldi (for GL Desktop Interface), which will also be used for another project: GLX-Desklet. Having a minimalistic core ensure better stability and performances, and less bugs.

New features

Of course a lot of new features come along with this new version:
- The System-Monitor applet can now monitor CPU's temperature and fans speed.
- The Logout applet now warns you when the computer needs to be restarted.
- The menus have a better layout and if you lock the dock, most of entries are hidden.
- The Slider is much faster to load a huge number of images.
- A unified icon settings window helps configuring all the launchers/applets/docks/desklets in a short time.
- ...

The items config window.

New interface

But the most important one is probably the arrival of a new interface for applets.
Interfaces allow you to write an applet in many languages. Currently, Python, Ruby, Vala, Mono and even Bash are supported. Java and Perl could be added easily as well. Now writing an applet for GLX-Dock is so easy that it will take you only few lines of code and few minutes!
Note that the applets will work for any program based on libgldi.

This has lead to a huge boost in the number of available applets. We now have:
- applets for all the menus: GnoMenu, MintMenu, Cardapio, and even Lancelot for KDE users
- applets for most of the bittorrent downloaders: Transmission, Deluge, and - once again KDE users have not been left behind - KTorrent
- a "Quote of the Day" applet
- a Translator applet

The Transmission applet running.

Third-party

The project has even set up its own applet repository; you can install new applets by simply dragging and dropping them onto the dock.
These applets have several advantages: you don't need root password to install them, you can only install the ones you need, you can easily modify them, and they will never crash the dock or even freeze it.
So, there applets can be seen as "super launchers", that can talk to the application they represent, and display the info to you inside the dock.

New themes

2 new themes are also available: Japan-2 and MeeGo. You can try them from the Theme Manager. But a few other themes has to be added on our servers!

The MeeGo theme: clear and efficient!

A video

Check out this video for a short demonstration of the latest beta!

Do you want to give it a try?

To try this beta release, you can use our Weekly ppa or by compiling the latest revision with the sources From BZR

EDIT: if you want to try our new plug-ins extras: launch this command after having installed bzr package

cd ~/.config/cairo-dock && rm -r third-party && bzr checkout --lightweight lp:cairo-dock-plug-ins-extras third-party

(only with the beta release)

GLX-Dock 2.2 reaches the beta state

fabounet — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 09:30:55 +0000

An official beta release of the 2.2 version of GLX-Dock is available.

An official beta release of the 2.2 version of GLX-Dock is available.

The main goal of this version is to approach the usability of the <your desktop environment here>-panel.
To reach it, we aimed at making an "Unity" theme, based on the recent interesting remarks of Canonical.

What's new?

4 points were targeted :

Be unobstrusive :

GLX-Dock now has 2 new visibility modes: "hide whenever the dock overlaps the active window" and "hide whenever the dock overlaps any window".
The dock will hide itself anytime it could get in your way, and will be visible otherwise.
You can choose between several smooth hiding animations: fade-out, semi-transparent, move-down, etc.
To make things better, icons that should draw your attention (like a message in the Pidgin applet or an alarm in the Clock applet) are visible (and animated) even when the dock is hidden.

Desklets (applets that are detached from the dock) can also be placed on your desktop without preventing you from clicking on what's behind.

Here is a short demo:

sources (webm)

Be useful

Some new key functionnalities make the dock a swiss-knife : possibility to manage tasks in the Clock's calendar, possibility to lock the screen in the Logout applet, possibility to use tiny URLs in the Drop-and-Share applet, the Dustbin applet handles all the drives, etc.
The Me-Menu and Messaging-Menu applets developed by Canonical for the gnome-panel can also be added to the dock in 1 click.

For those who want to write applets easily and in an language, the Dbus API has also gained some new functions. Write a DBus Applet

Be simple:

All the themes (including the default one) have been polished, they are pretty and functionnal after you select them.

The simple config panel now lets you set up most of the parameters you'd like to change in the first 5 minutes.
The advanced config panel is still present for those of you who want to tweak their theme, but you probably don't need it any more for a basic usage.

Unity

For this purpose, a new view has been added : the "panel" view. It turns the Dock into a pretty panel.
Also, since netbooks have a small screen footprint, it's a good idea to spread icons over several main docks. Therefore, it's now possible to create as many docks as you want, and to configure them independently (position, visibility, view, background).

Here is a short demo:

sources (webm)

To try it:
---------
If you're under Ubuntu >= 9.04 :

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cairo-dock-team/weekly
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cairo-dock cairo-dock-plug-ins

otherwise :

echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/cairo-dock-team/weekly/ubuntu $(lsb_release -sc) main ## Cairo-Dock-PPA-Weekly" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys E80D6BF5
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cairo-dock cairo-dock-plug-ins

A weekly repository is also available for Debian (and other forks like Linux Mint) users (Weekly ppa). For any other GNU/Linux & BSD distributions, you can also compile it with sources code From BZR

It is already very stable, but as any beta, it can contain some bugs.
The work is now focusing on fixing them all.
We appreciate any kind of contribution: bug reports, feedbacks, videos, themes, translations, patches, applets, etc

PS: Follow us on identi.ca (http://identi.ca/cairodock) or Twitter (http://twitter.com/cairodock) ! Or speak with us on #cairo-dock or #cairo-dock-fr on irc.freenode.net

Cairo-Dock 2.1.0 : faster, easier, better

matttbe — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:12:43 +0000

While 2.0 was introducing OpenGL, version 2.1 is getting more robust.
Here is the result of 4 months of hard labour :

Some "annoying bugs" from the Taskbar, PowerManager, Clipper and the keyboard indicator have been squashed.
The dock at the same became more stable and faster especially when OpenGL is activated (the applet Clock or Cairo-Penguin are now virtually using no CPU resources).
A news that should please many is that OpenGL now works with the very latest OpenSource drivers for ATI and Intel video card !

The dock is evolving thanks to you all ! Lots of comments made after the launch of 2.0 where noted and acted on.
The configuration panel has been polished (the presentation as improved and the options are better grouped, etc)
The pictures ratio is now correct (windows thumbnail and Switcher, etc)
It is easier to create a new main dock or to move the icons from one dock to another.
A new mode "extended dock" has appeared (the dock will fill up the all side of the screen).

Themes have also been reviewed and now have an user friendly interface : you can sort the theme by name, rating or simplicity. You can even rate them yourself once you have downloaded them !
Thanks to all of the contributors !
A complete tutorial is available here.

Applets have also gained in the process :

Shortcuts and Notes now have a improved desklet mode, which will allow you to display on your Desktop the icons normally drawn by Nautilus as well you "post-it".
The digital clock has a better rendering.
The applets 'Rhythmbox' and 'XMMS' merged to form a new applet MusicPlayer, It now allows to control just about any player.
'Cpusage', 'Ram-meter' and 'Nvidia' also merge into the System-Monitor applet, which offers basic system information (CPU, RAM, Nvidia card temperature, etc)

On the very new side we are introducing Dnd2Share, an file sharing applet. It will allow you to send your files on a server of your choice by simply dragging and dropping them on the applet ! you will not be able to live without it.

You will also notice that open effect of the Slide view is looking a bit more like its Mac OSX equivalent.

On the project side itself, we migrated to LaunchPad !
This means that:

there is a 'weekly-build' Ubuntu users.
a manual 'daily-compiled' (Mav' script has been updated)
Easier tools for the translators (it's here)
The possibility for everyone to contribute to the project thanks to bazaar.
A complete documentation of Cairo-Dock's API available at this address : http://doc.glx-dock.org.

As usual your comments/remarks are most welcome.
Enjoy this new version of Cairo-Dock !

The Cairo-Dock team.

Translated by ppmt

Cairo-Dock2 (code name : glx-dock)

fabounet — Mon, 04 May 2009 14:15:03 +0000

Cairo-Dock2 is coming !
Here is a non exhaustive list of the news :

Cairo-Dock is now a full OpenGL dock ! (the cairo backend is still available for old graphic cards or ATI)
New plug-ins provide many animations & visual effects : Animated icons, icon effects, illusion, drop indicator, motion blur, dialog rendering
New applets : keyboard indicator, mail, quick browser, Toons, weblets.
The config panel has been widely rewritten.
Great improvment of the Taskbar ergonomics.
Desklets can be rotated in 3D.
Dialogs have many different window decorators.
A lot of new themes, old ones have been reviewed.
The Theme Manager can now download new themes on the server for many applets : clock, dustbin, Cairo-Penguin, Toons, etc
and can build theme packages to easily exchange themes between users.
XGamma : added the ability to setup a custom luminosity on startup.
Shortcuts : added display of disk space.
Clock : smooth seconds' needle movment.
Slider : 3D transitions betweens slides and Exif data.
Rhythmbox : 3D themes.
Gmenu : added a quick launcher in an "ALT+F2" fashion
Direct scroll on many applets : XGamma, Slider, AlsaMixer, etc, and also on applications' icons.
And a lot of bugs fixes everywhere !

1.6.3 or How to close a branch in style

ppmt — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 06:46:53 +0000

Note: this article is a translation. You can find its original version written by Fabounet here

On one side it is too bad, as this was the version I wanted to see first in Ubuntu. This is definitely the most polished version so far.
On the other side let's be happy that it is not included when you see what it takes to be in! This version is the perfect excuse to erase the Ubuntu version from the memory

So once more only good stuff in sight!
Better late than never, Cairo-Dock from now on follows the Freedesktop standards (binaries are in /usr/lib, datas are in /usr/share and now the config in ~/.config/cairo-dock)
The icons also have now their onw directories, ~/.config/cairo-dock/current_theme/icons, to allow for complete interchangeable themes.

The gnome-panel can now be binned thanks to the applet GMenu. This was the last barrier : Access to the Main menu.
Another useful applet just appeared: Clipper (well known from all KDE users who won't be lost as the options are the same )

The Cairo_Desklets just received a face lift with new decorations themes for all of them, the possibility to rotate them, a wobbly effect when you move them with the mouse. It is possible to rapidly send the desklet from the desktop to dock in one click and the other way is as fast just drag and drop them on the desktop
The launcheurs also can be ejected from the dock wiht drag and drop (but for them no desklet mode, the disappear in an explosion!)

The gauge applets also have received an improvement: it is now possible to display their values on a graph (several forms are even available)

And finally the cherry on the cake: Moving the icons with the mouse inside the dock is now extremely fluid.

If it wasn't for the Branch2, I would nearly have had time to get bored

1.6.2 - 1st version to be in the Ubuntu repository

ppmt — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:08:10 +0000

Note: this article is a translation. You can find its original version written by Fabounet here

With this new version we are now in the official repositorie of one of the biggest distros : Ubuntu !

After Suse and soon Fedora and Debian, the dock is becomign easier and easier to install which in turnr should help to make it popular.

On the applets side, Slider and Stack have been added to the plig-ins package, which means that there is a total number of plugins of ... well a lot

On the dock itslef a big evolution occured on the interface between the dock and the applets, which means that it is now possible to have several instances of certain applets. You can several clock with different time zone, you can monitor the flow of several interfaces, you have several stacks or several weblets. But most important you can have a Tux and a Wanda roaming your dock at the same time

Anoter evolution which should be transparent to the user to start with is about the themes : as of now the project has its own themes'server that can be downloaded when they are needed (as if they were on your hard disk)

Like that the collection of themes for Cairo-Dock can only increase (thanks to your future contributions )