Get a Snow Leopard-like Dock for XP, Vista, and Windows 7

Do you envy the beautiful dock that is used to launch and switch between applications in “Snow Leopard”, Apple’s operating system? We’ll show you how to easily install a Snow Leopard-like dockon your Windows PC. Keep reading to learn how with a few mouse clicks, you can have a dock that’s even sleeker and more customizable than Snow Leopard.

Installing and using ObjectDock

I am a huge fan of ObjectDock, which has been around for many years and adds a Mac-like dock to either side of your desktop. ObjectDock supports transparency effects and lets you easily add shortcuts via drag & drop. It’s wonderful eye-candy for the old-school taskbar from Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Take a look:

1. Download ObjectDock for free from Stardock’s website. After installing the application, launch it by double-clicking on the icon.
   
2. Upon launching, your dock might be hidden by your default Windows taskbar. You can circumvent this by hiding the Windows taskbar (right-click on it, select “Properties” and check “Auto-hide the taskbar”) or by moving ObjectDock to the top of the screen. To move ObjectDock, right-click on ObjectDock and go to “Position on screen” and “Top”:
3. ObjectDock comes with its own set of shortcuts, including: Now, drag and drop your own shortcuts from the desktop (or files from Windows-Explorer) onto the dock or move existing shortcuts out:
4. To change ObjectDock’s design, click on the “Configure Dock” icon. For the highest possible visual quality for the dock and all animations and icons, click on “Performance Options”, then select “Top quality”, from the drop-down menu move the slider to “extra gradual”, and click “Optimize for performance” on the radial button.
   

   Note: We recommend only optimizing on systems that are less than 4 years old. Such a high graphic load could slow down older systems.

5. Next, click the “Appearance” tab. Here, you can make two essential changes to the look of the dock: You can adjust the magnification of the icons when you hover the cursor over them. You can also change the background of the dock itself. Here’s what I did
   

   I changed the regular icon size to 80 pixels and the magnified size to 86 pixels—that gives me a very subtle effect when I move the cursor over each individual icon:

   For  the “Background” setting, I went for “Aero Zoomer #2″, which looks amazing.

   Spend time checking this section out. Here you’ll find many beautiful skins included right out of the box.
   

6. If you want to browse through more skins, click on “Get more backgrounds from WinCustomize.com” and choose from many more.

If you enjoyed ObjectDock, you may want to check out “ObjectDock Plus”. Among other features, the upgrade allows you to add not only one, but as many docks as you like. You could even eliminate all your desktop icons and use only ObjectDock.

What do you think of ObjectDock? Hit the comments section and let us know!