However, for whatever absurd reason, Apple does not give the clock a calendar display. We have to depend on third party application(s) for this “should’ve been part of the OS” feature.

I’ve tried several applications and at the moment I’ve settled with the combination of Mac OS X menu bar clock and TinyCal – a Mac menu bar calendar with Google Calendar integration (free for basic features).

The problem is, the location of the menu bar clock is inconveniently separated from TinyCal.

I began to wonder whether we can re-arrange the order of items in the menu bar so that the couple could be positioned next to each other.

The random re-arrangement

It turns out that its possible to re-arrange the Mac menu bar items. A quick web search reveals that all that you have to do is just click and drag the item around to the location that you prefer while holding the Command key. Very convenient.

You can also drag out the items from the menu bar just like you can with the Dock items. A quick way to unclutter your menu bar.

However, this trick is only applicable to native Mac OS X applications like the clock, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi; with the exception of Spotlight which always stays at the utmost right of the menu bar. As for third party applications, they are just untouchable.

Non-Mac menu bar items are arranged in the order of their loading. But there’s no way to determine which app pops up first in the menu bar because they load simultaneously and not in sequence – another feature that should’ve been included by Apple.

So far, I am able to drag the clock as near to TinyCal as possible just by dragging it left. But to move the TinyCal right, another trick is required.

Leveraging the login items

You can’t touch the third party menu bar items, that much is clear. But that doesn’t mean you can’t try to take the different route: manipulate the login items. My research on tweaking the login items led me to several scripting solutions – the area where I prefer not to go.  Luckily I found one app called DelayedLauncher which is almost perfect for the job.

What DelayedLauncher does is delay the start up of chosen applications, then activate them after the pre-set delay time.

To achieve our objective of placing TinyCal next to the Mac’s menu bar clock, we should set TinyCal to load before the other menu bar items.

All you have to do is drag and drop all the third party menu bar apps from the Applications folder to the DelayedLauncher window. Then you set the delay time – how long do you want the system to wait at login before starting to launch the applications on the list. You can do this by moving the slider left or right. There’s the indicator on the right area of the window telling you the exact delay time (in seconds) related to the position of the slider.

The next step is to delete all of the menu bar items from the Login Items in the Accounts of System Preferences, and add TinyCal and DelayedLauncher there. This involves a simple process of clicking the minus and plus button below the application list pane.

There you go. A little lengthy process just to satisfy the curious.

But I learned a few useful new things here. First: I can finally get rid of that useless menu bar item; and second: I can decrease the login load of my system by delaying some items from starting up at login.

Please note that if you launched DelayedLauncher the second time to add more items, you have to click on the slider to stop the count down. This app don’t have any icon and also doesn’t have the feature to start the listed apps one by one in sequential order – yet.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• The 7 Simple & Great Tricks to Tweak Your Dock on Mac OS X (6)
• Supercharge your Mac Dock with these 4 tools [Mac only] (19)
• Stretch Your Windows Desktop for Maximum Space (2)
• How To Create & Change Mac Icons Quickly & Easily (2)
• 5 Uses For Stacks You May Not Have Thought Of [Mac] (6)

So here’s the definition of the Dock according to Apple’s Dictionary:

An application launcher that comes with Mac OS X. The Dock is located along the edge of the screen. It contains icons for many of the applications available on the computer, and you can drag icons to and from the Dock. The Dock shows that an application is running by displaying a small black triangle below or next to its icon.

Most Mac users just accept the Dock as it is. But maybe they shouldn’t. There are many ways to tweak the Dock, and here are several of them.

Part One: On The Dock

First, we’ll start from the obvious: the Dock itself.

1. Resizing the Dock

You can easily resize the dock by hovering your mouse on the dock, click on the dividing line, then drag up or down to adjust the size. If you just click and hold, the magnification effect will be off temporarily until you release the click.

2. Right click options

If you do right click (or Control + Click) on the dividing line, a pop up menu with several options will appear. Among them is changing the location of the dock.

If you choose to open the Dock Preferences, you’ll get more or less the same options with the right click.

But if you right click or click and hold on one of the application icons, you’ll get options for that application instead.

3. Removing icons

You can just drag out an inactive application’s icon from the dock to remove them.

Part Two: Inside The Terminal

Now we’ll move onto the real stuff. If anyone wants to do serious tweaking on Mac OS X, there’s no better (and scarier) way to do it than using command lines on the Terminal.

4. Add Spaces between icons

Except for the two icons beside the dividing line, all icons in the Dock are located next to one another without too much space.

Using Terminal’s command lines, you can add a separator in the form of blank space between icons to group them. Write (or copy and paste) this command to Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add ‘{ “tile-type” = “spacer-tile”; }’

Hit Enter/Return, then write:

killall Dock

Hit Enter/Return one more time and the Dock will be restarted and missing for a few (milli)seconds. After the Dock return, you’ll find a blank space in the Dock. Drag this space to the location that you want.

Repeat the process to add another blank space.

To remove the blank space, simply drag out the space from the dock. Alternatively, you can right click or click and hold the space and a pop up menu will appear saying “Remove from Dock”. Click on that command to remove the space.

5. Show only the active applications

Sometimes you feel that the Dock contains too many items. You can reduce the crowds by making the Dock shows only icons from the active applications. Use this command line in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dock static-only -bool TRUE

Hit Enter/Return, then write:

killall Dock

Hit Enter/Return one more time to restart the Dock.

To reverse the process, change the “TRUE” into “FALSE” (sans quote).

Part Three: Other Terminal Commands

We are still discussing Terminal commands to tweak the dock. Since the general process is the same, I’d like to simplify the explanation by only mentioning the command lines.

Please remember to always hit Enter/Return after each command line, continued by “killall Dock” command and another hit at Enter/Return key to restart the Dock to enable the change.

6. Flattening the Dock

You can change the appearance of the Dock to the flat 2D view like the older version of Mac OS X by using this command:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES

To reverse, change the YES into NO.

7. Make the hidden applications transparent

Sometimes Mac users hide some of the open applications (by using Hide menu or Command + H). This process could be enhanced by making the hidden applications icons in the dock transparent. Use this command to activate this effect.

defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool YES

Replace YES with NO to reverse the effect.

Do you know any other tweaks for Dock? Please share them using the comments below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Unveil Hidden Mac OS X Features With Secrets (5)
• Supercharge your Mac Dock with these 4 tools [Mac only] (19)
• How To Manipulate the Mac Menu Bar & Login Items (9)
• 5 Tools to Make Windows XP Look Like Vista (90)
• Your Easy Guide to Windows 7 Themes (16)

In my opinion, Stacks isn’t as bad as most people make it seem. I’ve found several useful reasons to keep it around, one of which is detailed here: Use Stacks To Save Websites For Later Reading.

After a bit of brainstorming, I managed to find a few more good uses for Stacks. Some of them may not be new tricks but I’d like to share them with you anyway.

Mail Attachments Stack

For those of you who use Apple Mail as the default mail application, this may actually come in useful for you. You can create a Stack to show all of your recent mail attachments.

Here’s how it works: every time you use Quick Look to preview mail attachments or directly open them by double-clicking on the attachment, they are automatically stored in ~/Library/Mail Downloads/

Simply drag the Mail Downloads folder to the Stacks section of the Dock and let go.

You may be overwhelmed by the thousands of attachments you have in there. It’s a good idea to arrange it by ‘Date Created’ and display it as Fan or List view so that you’ll know which are the latest attachments.

Any attachments which aren’t previewed with Quick Look or opened directly in Mail or instead, saved to the ‘Downloads’ folder will not show up in this folder.

Recent Applications/Documents/Servers Stack

This is a Terminal trick to make a Recent stack show up in the Dock. If you take a look at the Appearance preferences (System Preferences ->Appearance), you’ll notice a section which lets you determine the number of recent applications, documents and servers to display. This will generate a list located in the menu bar, click on the Apple icon -> Recent Items.

This is what you’ll need to do if you want that list to appear as a stack. Open Terminal (located in the Utilities folder or just Spotlight for it) and copy and paste these 2 lines of commands individually:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add ‘{ “tile-data” = { “list-type” = 1; }; “tile-type” = “recents-tile”; }’

killall Dock

After the Dock relaunches, the Recent Items stack will appear.

Right-click on the stack and there is a contextual menu which will allow you to display the recent documents or servers instead.

The ‘Favorite Items’ stack doesn’t really work in Leopard – it merely displays the ‘Places’ section of the Finder sidebar. If you want to display your favorite items…

A Favorites Stack

A Favorites stack is basically a stack of anything which you add to the Favorites folder. This function is not unavailable in Leopard, it’s just slightly harder to find.

The old ‘Control-Option-Click’ shortcut to make an item a Favorite doesn’t work in Leopard. Instead, what you need to do is click on an item to select it, click on the File menu, press and hold the Shift key and click ‘Add to Favourites’. Or select an item and press Command-Shift-T.

The shortcuts/aliases are stored in ~/Library/Favorites/. Drag that folder to the Stacks section in the Dock to make your Favorites stack.

Preferences Stack

By making a Preferences stack, it’s possible to shave a few seconds off your navigating time. It’s not very difficult to make this stack. I’ll just need to explain something: the preference panes you see in System Preferences are located in various folders. Also, it’s not necessary to add all the preference panes to the Stack. For instance, I hardly ever go to the Speech preference pane so I can exclude that from the Stack.

To make this stack, create a folder called Preferences and place it in your Home folder.

Open a new Finder window and go to System/Library/PreferencePanes. Command-click on the preferences you want to add to your stack, then Command-Option-click and drag them to the Preferences folder in the other Finder window. You should end up with a folder of aliases to the preference panes.

These are only the default preferences from Mac OS X. The other preference panes for example Perian or Flip4Mac WMV are located at ~/Library/PreferencePanes. Repeat same procedure to put their aliases into the Preference folder you’ve created.

Once you’re done, drag the Preferences folder to the Stacks section of the Dock.

Stacks as actual drop boxes

By creating stacks for the Public Folder located in your Home folder; and the Public folder in the Dropbox folder (not applicable if you don’t use Dropbox), you can literally create drop boxes as dumping grounds for everything you want to share with others.

Drag-and-drop anything into these stacks and they’re automatically shared within your LAN or through the internet (in the case of Dropbox). To find out how to set up sharing within your local area network, take a look at this Macnifying OS X article.

Are there any other useful Stacks tips you’d like to share with our readers? Let us know in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Tweak Mac Leopard’s Hidden Settings With xMod (3)
• The 7 Simple & Great Tricks to Tweak Your Dock on Mac OS X (6)
• Supercharge your Mac Dock with these 4 tools [Mac only] (19)
• Stretch Your Windows Desktop for Maximum Space (2)
• Slimming Down and Power Up Your Mac’s Service Menu (6)

When you open the xMod application, you will see a window with several option panes at the top.

Under the Tools pane, there is a one-click button for you to check SMART status of your disks. For those who are not sure what SMART status is, it refers to the Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology that is built into your Mac’s hard drive to constantly monitor its condition. Frequent checks of the SMART status can allow you to predict and/or prevent disk failures.

You can also repair files permission and verify Preferences files in the Tools pane.

In the Finder pane, there is a great list of stuff that you can tweak, ranging from the default behavior in the Finder window to screen capture file type and save location. You can also change the menubar to a white background (just like in Mac Tiger) or give it a textured look.

One tweak that amazed me is the ability to set your screensaver as your desktop wallpaper. If you like to see a dynamic effect on your desktop, then you will definitely like this tweak.

The Dock pane allows you to change the behavior of your dock. If you prefer the old 2D dock in Mac Tiger or want to lock up some of the dock options (such as the position of the dock, dock content, autohide option) so that other people cannot change it, then this is the place to tweak it. If you don’t like the dashboard, you can also disable it here.

Both the Safari and the Clean panes contain tweaks for the Safari browser. The Safari pane allows you to enable the “Inspect Element” and debugging options while the Clean pane provides a one-click clean up of all your Web history.

The iTunes pane is a newly added feature in the latest version 1.5. It allows you to change the play count of selected songs and also remove dead tracks if there are any.

On the whole, I would recommend xMod to anyone who wants to get more out of their Mac Leopard and/or looking for ways to get thing done faster. It didn’t take long for xMod to become one of my ‘must-have’ applications in Mac. What about you?

xMod is free and can be downloaded from Geek Peak Software.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Supercharge your Mac Dock with these 4 tools [Mac only] (19)
• Unveil Hidden Mac OS X Features With Secrets (5)
• The Incredible Free Manual For Every Mac User [PDF] (24)
• The 7 Simple & Great Tricks to Tweak Your Dock on Mac OS X (6)
• Switch Your Mac Function Keys with FunctionFlip [Mac] (4)

Over time, things have changed. I couldn’t be bothered with how it looks, I took it for granted and purely used it to launch and switch between apps. Oh how the love has died.

But recently, I’ve found a couple of tools that seems to have rekindled my child-like infatuation which I once had for my Dock. And now, I’m back to customizing it all over again, tweaking it to look its best and function at its prime. Here’s what I used.

Dock Library

Dock Library is an application which changes the theme of Leopard’s Dock. By default, it’s a regular grayish reflective surface. The problem with the default Dock is that it makes the glowing dot (of applications which are running) very hard to see. Not to mention, it’s boring. With Dock Library, you can change all that.

To get your themes, head on over to leoparddocks.net, they have some juicy-looking Dock themes. Download the theme you want, import it into Dock Library and activate. I got my new Dock running in less than a minute.

Dock Dodger

Especially on my MacBook, Dock real-estate is no laughing matter. I have to really make sure that the applications which I place on my Dock are useful. If I put too many applications there, everything gets too small. Also, applications which are currently running are placed on the Dock, taking up precious space.

Dock Dodger can alter any selected applications to run without an icon on the Dock. How does Dock Dodger do it? Don’t ask, it’s magic.

Dockables

Dockables is a collection of system events like Shut Down, Restart, Lock Screen, Empty Trash and Sleep Display just to name a few. They’re configured to run with just a single click and so very convenient to use when placed on the Dock.

I used to leave my MacBook on at night and since I can’t shut the lid, the best I could do was turn off the screen by going to System Preferences-> Energy Saver-> Put display to sleep after 1 minute. With Dockables, all I need to do is click on Sleep Display and that’s it. The screen switches off immediately. One-click convenience.

SuperDocker

SuperDocker is a little gem of an application. It allows me to tweak the settings of my Dock, customizing various aspects from position of the Dock, alignment, reverting it to the 2 dimensional Dock, it even allows me to lock the items on the Dock so that nobody can tamper with my perfect setting.

Besides that, I can also change the background colour of Stack’s grid from the regular translucent black to something more exciting. Blood red, perhaps?

SuperDocker is not only about the Dock. It can also tweak some Finder, Safari, Dashboard and System settings. If you’re worried about messing up your Mac, don’t. There’s always a “Restore Default Settings” button which you hit it anything goes horribly wrong.

Honorable Mention

Dock Spaces didn’t quite make it on my list. It’s a Spaces equivalent, only it’s the Dock that changes. You can configure up to 5 different Docks. Have a go at it, see if it convinces you.

Like all applications covered by MakeUseOf, these are free but donations towards the developers’ efforts are always appreciated.

If you happen to be a Windows user and would like to have that Mac-ish eye-candy, check out these posts by my collegues:

How to Make Windows XP look like a Mac
Docks – The 6 Best Friends of your Windows Taskbar
5 Packs to Transform Windows to other OS

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Tweak Mac Leopard’s Hidden Settings With xMod (3)
• The 7 Simple & Great Tricks to Tweak Your Dock on Mac OS X (6)
• 4 Applications to Give Windows XP Mac Functionality (16)
• Your Easy Guide to Windows 7 Themes (16)
• The Incredible Free Manual For Every Mac User [PDF] (24)

Over time we have introduced you to quite a few dock programs on Make Use Of. However, the one I’m covering today is different because it really gives you extra space and a lot more freedom. The cues “stretching your desktop” and “side slide” might give a wrong impression, though. No, you don’t actually stretch your desktop to the side, but with SideSlide you add a tray of custom size which can hold almost anything you desire – shortcuts, bookmarks, feeds, system commands or notes. But let me guide you through the features step by step.

Position & Size

First of all you will want to give the freshly installed tool its custom spot on your screen. To show SideSlide or rather its workspace, click the little paper airplane symbol in your taskbar. Move the mouse to the top of the dark grey window until your cursor switches to a hand. Right-clicking the workspace here, you can drag it to your desired location on any side of your screen, then resize it like a regular other window, and you’re done.

Control Workspace

The screenshot above reveals what the button in the top right of your workspace will do. The button next to it defines whether you can move and resize items on the workspace or whether they are locked. In this case (open circle) the workspace is unlocked, click the symbol to close the circle and lock it. With the buttons in the top left you can collectively shrink/expand, fold/unfold items on the workspace or manage your RSS feeds.

Add content

Content can be added in many different ways. RSS feeds, notes, URLs, system commands, file or folder shortcuts can be added directly onto the workspace. URLs, system commands, file and directory shortcuts can also be collected in separate containers. Folder containers can display the contents of a specific folder and you can open files or subfolders right from that container.

Please note that RSS feeds require Microsoft Core XML Services (MSXML) to be installed on your computer. You can download it through the Microsoft Download Center.

In many cases you can work with both the right-click and the left-click menu, which may give you the same or different results. The program is quite flexible, so it’s worth playing with it! To create a container for example, left-click into an open space and a small menu with color buttons will appear. Other than picking the color of your new container, you can use this menu to open the settings & appearance menu, save the workspace or toggle transparency. So pick a color for a new container, then draw the container onto the workspace. Alternatively, you can right-click onto the workspace and select >New >Container from the menu. If you love shortcuts, you can simply click [Ctrl] + [C] to create a new container.

Manage content

There are so many little buttons and options, it’s very confusing at first. Let’s start with containers. In the top right corner of each container there is a little [+] or [-] symbol with which you can unfold or fold the container. The second button from the right is the letter [N]. Click it to hide or open the note field. You can enter a description or leave it blank and hide the contents. With the symbol in the top left corner of each container you can minimize it and with the symbol next to it you can view and select tags.

Tags are a great cue. Each item, with the exception of RSS feeds, whether it’s part of a container or whether it sits directly on the workspace, can be tagged. Right-click it and select >Properties from the menu. Here you can rename the item, choose a custom icon, add parameters, tags, and more.

The small image on the left displays a PDF document sitting on the workspace with the shortcut mini-toolbar opened. Open the toolbar by pressing the [Ctrl] key while clicking the shortcut. It allows quick and easy modification of font size and colors. But you can also access these options through the >Properties menu described above. As I said, SideSlide is extremely flexible.

One notable feature is that you can detach containers to appear as stable menus on your desktop, even when the workspace is collapsed. This can be extremely useful. For example you could create containers for specific projects and instead of having the workspace open, you can detach the container/s you will need for the current project and all the other junk is nicely hidden in the minimized workspace.

Settings & Appearance

It’s a hip tool and as such it must have some style options and well, it doesn’t disappoint, at least not much. The Settings & Appearance menu is most easily accessed via clicking F3 or F4, respectively. Unfortunately, the Settings window doesn’t look right on my computer. Many options appear as black bars. Not helpful. However, there is a great SlideSide Tour on the NorthGlide website which also contains a screenshot of the Settings window, so if you’re experiencing the same issue, refer to the screenshot below, which I got from their site.

Appearance looks just fine, and it’s what most interests me to be honest. You can change the wallpaper of your workspace, change the colors of almost everything, or select a preset theme. Very well done with a lot of options!

As I said before, there is an excellent SideSlide tour available on its homepage, and there is much left to be discovered. Enjoy exploring and let us know what you think!

Other posts on similar software tools you may be interested in:

Top 7 Unknown Free Launcher Applications for Windows
Best Alternatives to Windows Start Menu
Docks – The 6 Best Friends of your Windows Taskbar

(By) Tina is a regular MUO author. In her offline life she’s a PhD student interested in unraveling signaling events that determine cartilage and bone development.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 5 Tools to Make Windows XP Look Like Vista (90)
• WinHack – How to Change the Windows Start Button (Win XP) (20)
• Windows Registry Tweaks (Part 2) (8)
• Speed up file Copy’n Paste with Piky Basket (9)
• Some non-Registry Windows tweaks (7)

Rocketdock

As you can tell, Rocketdock is an application launcher that functions in the same way as the Dock does on Mac computers. I have always really liked the Dock on Macs, because it helped keep your desktop and task bar clear of clutter that can get built up over time. Rocketdock also has several docklets available that allows you to customize it to your liking.

RocketDock has been previously mentioned on Make Use Of, such as Tina here.

Yahoo! Widgets

Widgets have always interested me with their ability to keep you up to date on whatever you want while still being hidden behind your desktop. A simple press of a hotkey opens up a world of tools and knowledge. Yahoo! Widgets allows you to bring this functionality to your Windows XP PC. There are almost 5,000 widgets available from Yahoo so you will definitely be able to find what you need.

DExposE2

Expose has always been such a nice feature on Macs that serves as a great alternative to alt+tab. Alt+tab has traditionally served me well, but as I have gotten more and more into being a geek, I tend to have more and more applications open at the same time. This can make alt+tab not as useful when switching between windows or applications. DEexpose2 brings great expose functionality to your Windows computer to give you an alternative to alt+tab.

Launchy

Quicksilver was the first keyboard application launcher I ever heard about, but it was only available for Macs. Quicksilver allows users to quickly perform many different types of tasks through just a couple of keystrokes. In early 2007, Launchy was released and brought Quicksilver-like functionality to Windows XP. Since its release, Launchy has received critical acclaim, and it was also recently written about on Make Use Of by Shankar. You might also want to check out Enso Launcher that was covered by Jimmy. We also talked about it in latest MakeUseOf Podcast as well.

What Mac features would you like to see brought over to the PC?

Kyle Judkins is a 24 year old marketer and part-time tech blogger. He is the author of LostInTechnology where he talks about some basic technology tips and tricks that everyone can use.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 6 Cool FREE Widget Platforms for your PC (11)
• 5 Tools to Make Windows XP Look Like Vista (90)
• WinHack – How to Change the Windows Start Button (Win XP) (20)
• Use Videos As A Screensaver Or Wallpaper [Windows] (13)
• Tweak Windows XP/Vista/7 to Your Taste with XdN Tweaker (10)

Vista Start Menu

Vista Start Menu turns XP’s Start menu into one like on Vista. Not only do you get a better look but also many new features that are normally not there. These include: resizable start menu, zoom in/out, program launcher, desktop search, power buttons, tabs, and more. Another noteworthy aspect, Vista Start Menu does not change your system settings, thus making it easy to install, as well as simple to remove.

Vista Transformation Pack 7

VTP changes XP’s interface, including the Start menu, the Control Panel, system dialogs, icons, and more, to Vista style. Also includes a transparency function to mimic Vista’s Aero Glass functionality. It’s probably the most comprehensive package out of all, so be very careful with it. While I haven’t experienced any problems some folks reported difficulties in uninstalling it (see comments here). Here are some of the notable changes that will be made to your system.

[Update: Version 8 was released yesterday (Nov 28). It's seems to be better and much more stable. Read more here]

• Boot screen / Welcome Screen / Logon Screen.
• New desktop, file and toolbar icons.
• Progress Dialogs.
• New System Tray icons.
• New Sounds scheme.
• New interface visual styles.
• Windows Media Player Skins.

RocketDock

RocketDock is a portable, memory-friendly, smoothly animated, alpha blended application launcher that sits on your screen. It provides a nice clean interface to drop shortcuts on for easy access and organization. Some features that are worth looking at include: Minimize active windows to the dock, drag-n-drop interface, Dual-monitor support, Auto-hide and Popup on mouse over, and Running application indicators. Check it out in action in the video below

VistaMizer

VistaMizer modifies about 400 of your system files, and when you reboot your system after installation you won’t remember how your old desktop looked like. It’s highly customizable and changes lots of stuff. What’s really good about is that it will keep backup of all the changes (so that you can easily revert it) and won’t replace/overwrite anything that would risk destabilizing your system.

WindowBlinds

WindowsBlinds is not a program specifically designed to Vistalize your system. It’s more a tool for applying different visual theme on your entire current Windows environment: changing overall look and feel, title bars, push buttons, start bar, start menu and more. Similar to the above RocketDock, it claims to be memory-friendly, so it shouldn’t slow down your system. Once installed, you can either apply one of the default visual themes or download one from the WindowsBlinds gallery (over 1000 themes). WindowsBlinds comes both in a free and paid version. Although the free version lacks some of the additional features it still does the job.

Share you thoughts in comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• WinHack – How to Change the Windows Start Button (Win XP) (20)
• Tweak Windows XP/Vista/7 to Your Taste with XdN Tweaker (10)
• Stretch Your Windows Desktop for Maximum Space (2)
• Some non-Registry Windows tweaks (7)
• Recover Your Lost XP, Vista & Office Serial Numbers (22)