When outlining the benefits of various freeware alternatives to renowned (but often pricey) programs and apps that we have profiled on many Free Fridays past, one the features you’ve probably seen highlighted is the accurate recreation of familiar user interface. In less technical terms, this simply means that a freeware substitute effectively "mimics" the distinct placement of shortcuts, icons, and tools offered by the program it is meant to resemble. While this is just a perk of many items, it is the main purpose behind today’s featured goodie: ObjectDock

If my Los Angeles website design projects have taught me one thing, it is that usability is the name of the game. Users appreciate having things as plainly visible and easy to click as possible. One of the most popular examples of this is the Mac OS dock bar, which displays the icons of your choice conveniently at the bottom of your screen. Having a dock bar doesn’t cost any additional money, but oftentimes committed Mac users find themselves in situations where they need to work on PC's, and getting reoriented can eat up valuable time in many cases. However, it only takes a few minutes to install ObjectDock and have all your icons where you are used to seeing them.

Created by Stardock, ObjectDock is offers a "Macsimile" alternative to the Windows taskbar. Once you have ObjectDock installed, you can select the number of items you want to appear on it and if you want to enable zoom. You can customize the color, style, and size to suit your preferences, and autohide it just like you would a Mac dock. The latest version allows you add more than one dock and label each one with a tab. ObjectDock is available for Windows XP, Vista, and 7.

Thanks for reading. Jason.
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