Cairo-Dock gets retooled for GTK+ 3

Cairo Dock 3.0.0 with the new default theme, running under Gnome 3 in Debian

The developers of Cairo-Dock, also known as GLX-Dock, have released version 3.0.0 of their open source application switcher. The release includes a number of new features such as a Twitter applet and the ability to switch users from the dock. The system now uses GTK+ 3 for better integration into the Gnome 3 desktop and environments based on GNOME 3 like Unity and Cinnamon.

Other improvements in Cairo-Dock 3.0.0 are better keyboard controls for the dock, integration with Unity's sound menu on Ubuntu, better text drawing and a new default theme. Cairo-Dock runs on any desktop that supports compositing and can be made to look very different through the use of themes. It allows the user to perform all the tasks of a traditional application panel such as managing windows, starting applications and logging out of the desktop. Additionally, it handles several file managing tasks and allows users to control their media player.

Cairo-Dock is also expandable with plugins (called applets in this context). Applets can be downloaded from the project's web site and add new functionality – one example being the included Twitter applet that allows users to tweet straight from their desktop and which also lets them read their timeline and get notified of messages directed at them.

More information on this release, and Cairo-Dock in general, can be found on the project's Launchpad page. The project's web site provides installation instructions for all major Linux distributions and also for compiling from source code, which is available under the GPLv3, with some parts licensed under the LGPLv2.

(fab)