One thing that I really want in my Windows 7 is the Mac style toolbar. It is the most fun to use interface that I have seen. It neatly organizes your icons, and provides a nice look n feel to your desktop. There are some free software out there that can add the similar Mac style toolbar to Windows.
Here are my favorite 3 software to add Mac style toolbar to Windows 7
1) ObjectDock
This is amazingly beautiful, and surprisingly simple to use software. You just install it, and it will show as a Mac style toolbar on your Windows 7 desktop. It shows icons of your running programs, as well as shortcuts that you want to add. You can change the skins to reflect your taste. It comes with an interesting feature of docklets – these are like plugins that you can add to your ObjectDock taskbar to add additional features to it. Read more Here
Here are some of the features of ObjectDock:
- Display currently running applications, and your shortcuts.
- Change appearance of icons and background using thousands of free skins and icons.
- Add docklets for specific functions on your dock (like a weather docklet)
- Option to put the taskbar anywhere on your desktop (horizontal, or vertically aligned).
- Live thumbnail previews of the running applications.
2) RocketDock
This is another great free software to add Mac style toolbar to Windows. This has lot of features like ObjectDock. A feature that I really like in RocketDock is you can minize your running windows to RocketDock, and it will show you live previews of those.
Here are some of the features of RocketDock:
- Real-time window previews in Vista
- Can be set to auto-hide, and then pop up on mouse over.
- Fully customizable, and option to change skins.
RocketDock and ObjectDock support skins of each other. Apart from that, you can also all ObjectDock docklets to RocketDock. Read more Here.
3) Circle Dock
Both the software above are pretty good, and add a nice Mac style toolbar to Windows. This third software Cirlce Dock is completely free from both the above. Instead of adding a simple horizontal toolbar to your desktop, Circle Dock actually installs a circular toolbar to your Windows! This is the prettiest looking toolbar that I have ever seen.
Here are some of the features of Circle Dock:
- Launch your programs from a circular dock.
- You can drag and drop your files, folders, and shortcuts onto Circle Dock.
- You can reorder the dock items by draging and dropping them over each other.
- You can change the images shown for the icons.
- You can change the skins, and Circle Dock is compatible with skins of RocketDock and ObjectDock.
- The dock appears where your mouse is by pressing a hotkey (default is F1) or your middle mouse button.
- You can rotate Circle Dock with either your mouse wheel or the keyboard arrow keys.
Read more Here.
All these free software are really good, and will make your desktop pretty.