KDocker - Dock Anything

Note: This is the historic KDocker 1.x page. The current series is 4.x and can be found here

KDocker
KDocker icon


KDocker will help you dock any application into the system tray. This means you can dock openoffice, xmms, firefox, thunderbird, anything! Just point and click. Works for all NET WM compliant window managers - that includes KDE, GNOME, Xfce, Fluxbox and many more.

Select language - Polish
Features
  • Supports Session Management (XSMP) and auto launch applications that do not support session management (e.g firefox)
  • Drag 'n Drop (XDND) support. You can drop items into the system tray icons
  • Optionally docks when application is minmized or obscured by other windows
  • Cool window title ballooning (song titles will be ballooned when your media player switches to a new song)
  • Optionally removes the window from the task bar
  • Its internationalized and currently supports Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Russian, Spanish and Swedish locales
  • Dock 1, 2, 10 windows but there is only one instance of KDocker running all the time
  • Tracks system tray appearance/disappearance and acts intelligently
Download/Install
Get the latest tar ball from the project page

Packages
Please note that the contributed version is not always the latest released version. Please contact contributors directly if you face any problems.

Suse By Toni
9.1 - Binary Source
9.2 - Binary Source
9.3 - Binary
10.0 - Binary
Slackware - TGZ By Mr Souissi
Redhat
EL 4 - rpm By RafaeLGV
Gentoo - ebuild (HOWTO) By Alastair
Debian - deb By Mr Souissi
KUbuntu (By Anthony)
deb http://dinton.no-ip.org/ kubuntu main
deb-src http://dinton.no-ip.org/ kubuntu main

Screen Shots

KDE
KDE snapshot
Docked applications - xmms, gimp, sametime, thunderbird, kdevelop

GNOME
GNOME snapshot
Docked applications - realplayer, openoffice impress, sametime, gcalctool, gimp

XFCE (From homik) Snapshot
XFCE (From Marc Nadeau) Snapshot (Huge)
Fluxbox (From John Andrews) Snapshot

Options
KDocker has a rich command line interface. KDocker -h will display all the command line options. The usage is:
KDocker [options] [Command]
Command is the application that you want to launch and dock (e.g. kdocker xmms). When you dont provide a command, KDocker will request you to select any window to dock using the mouse (like xkill, xprop)

Option
Description
-a
Show author information. Yup, about me.
-b Suppress the warning dialog when docking non-normal windows (blind mode)
-d
Disable session management. KDocker will not attempt to redock this application when you relogin.
-e
Enable session management. KDocker will attempt to redock this application when you relogin. [default]
-f
Dock window that has the focus(active window).
TIP: This simple but brilliant feature was requested by Thomas McGuire. You can bind "kdocker -f" to Win+Z (using the K Menu Editor). So all you have to do to dock any application is to make sure its in the front. press Win+Z and it will be docked into the system tray.
-h    
Display this help.
-i icon
Custom dock icon.
Don't like the icon that KDocker auto detected from the application's window? Use your own. Custom icons are saved as a part of your session. This saves the hassle to set the icon each and every time.
-l
Launch on startup
A crude hack for applications that do not support Session Management. Take firefox for instance. Lets say you logged out when firefox was up and running. When you relogon it wont start automatically. KDocker will launch it automatically for you when you use this option.
-m
Keep application window mapped (dont hide on dock)
Use this when you want the application to be docked but want it to be shown on the task bar. By default, the application is docked and hidden.
-o
Dock when obscured
When the application gets totally hidden by other  windows, KDocker will automatically dock it.
-p secs
By default, when the title of the application changes, it is  ballooned from the system tray for 4 seconds. Works excellently with xmms - when a new song starts, the name/title of the song is ballooned. To configure the time for which the balloon is displayed use this option. (-p 0 disables ballooning)
-q
Disable ballooning title changes (quiet)
If the window title change updates that are ballooned from the system tray are getting to you, use this option to ask KDocker to disable balooning. This is the same as "-p 0".
-t
Remove this application from the task bar
A super cool feature. The application will never appear in the task bar. Use this with xmms.
-v Display the version
-w wid
Window id of the application to dock
Most X11 applications have this. Its here for the sake of completeness.

Overwhelmed by the options above? Don't you worry. They are accessible through the context menu (right-click on the system tray icon).
Context menu

Reporting Bugs
In case something goes wrong just send SIGINT to kdocker (kill -SIGINT <pid of kdocker>). It will nicely undock everything and bail out. You can do this if you dock something by mistake (the desktop panel or the desktop itself for instance. kdocker should have warned you in any case.)

Details on how to send a bug report are in the README (see Enabling tracing section).

Contributing
Here are ways you can contribute to KDocker
- Provide translations. Read the README on how to provide translations.
- Provide packages for your distribution.
- Bug reports/patches/screen shots on other WM
- Send me a postcard! No card? Send me stamps (I happen to be a philatelist) :) Mail it to:
Girish Ramakrishnan
G7, Block No.12, R.K.Apartments,
Hoysala Nagar,
Bangalore,
Karnataka, India

Credits
KDocker is developed and maintained by John Schember.
KDocker was originally written by Girish Ramakrishnan . He is not an active member of the project.

The new KDocker icon and the one on the top of this page is by Marcel Dierkes
The old KDocker icon (anchor) was by Girish Ramakrishnan

Translations
Brazilian Portuguese - Paulo Ruthes
Bulgarian - Peter Toushkov
Czech - Jiri Hofman
Dutch - Jay Kamminga
French - Al
German - Thomas Runge
Hungarian - Nyitrai Sianis István
Indonesian - Eko Prasetiyo
Italian - Alessio Cassibba
Japanese - Masaaki Kanno
Polish - KonMan
Russian - Aleskey Kirpichnikov
Spanish - Edulix
Swedish - Daniel Nylander

Note
: To contact any of the people above, copy the URL and use the last part for the email-id