Simple Dock

[damianj]

I know there are probably a ton of these out there, but here's my take. It's a dock that holds 14 items; no more no less. I didn't want to add a scrolling feature because to me a dock should have things accessible at all times. If I have to scroll through a whole bunch of items I might as well use the start menu. Also, this is kind of experimental since I compiled a python script into an .exe that the skin can use. It should work without you having python installed, but I'm not sure if there are any other dependencies I have overlooked. To be honest this was more or less a proof of concept for myself and a starting point since this is my "first" skin.

This originally started as Setuini's "File View Launcher," but evolved into what I have now. Credit for the inspiration and foundation of what would become this skin goes to him.
(Setuini's skin: http://rainmeter.deviantart.com/art/File-View-Launcher-for-Rainmeter-420545283)

TL;DR: This might not work at all

When an application is open, the icons are in color and their alpha is at 100%.
When an application is closed the icons go to greyscale and the alpha is around 75%.
When you roll over an icon with your mouse pointer, it goes to greyscale and the colors invert.

The file can be found here (had trouble uploading it to this post):
http://jimenezd.deviantart.com/art/Simple-Dock-1-0-456798650

Icons I used:
http://dakirby309.deviantart.com/art/Metro-UI-Icon-Set-725-Icons-280724102

To set it up install the .rmskin file provided then go to the skins folder (e.g. "..\Documents\Rainmeter\Skins\Simple Dock\@Resources"). In the "@Resources\Launcher" folder place 14 shortcuts of your liking. If you want to use your own icons I've left an "icons" folder for you to place them in (this is completely optional). To change your icons image all you have to do is right click your shortcut file and click "Properties", then you click on the "Change Icon" button near the bottom. In the window that pops up you can click "Browse" and navigate to where you placed your custom icons and select the one you want to use for that shortcut.

Once you've done that launch the skin and it should set itself up. If something goes wrong post here and I'll see if I can help you figure out what's going wrong.

[exper1mental]

Nice! Encountered one issue though, every time the skin updates it causes Rainmeter to temporarily lag. I had to modify a fair amount of code to get rid of it so heres a link to the modified skin if you want to take a look at it. http://sta.sh/0jsdc8ab82q

[damianj]

Oh that's nice. I figured my code was a bit inefficient, but since I only had my machine to test it on I left it as it was. Still haven't gotten my head around how to best structure a skin and what not.

--Edit
Updated the deviantART page with a link to your post in case other people were experiencing the lag as well.