And now, after a few variations since the last desktop I presented, here is how it looks as of 4/9/09. I've since replaced Toolbox with RK Launcher. Based on the program icon, I think it used to be called Rocket Launcher. I have it set with a 100% transparent background. It only shows when I'm using it so the desktop looks very clean. I've also moved the gadgets off the sidebar, which is minimized, so that they can be stacked without spaces in between.
RK Launcher is much more flexible than ToolBox. Where the toolbox icons were static and stayed on the screen, RK Launcher is able to auto-hide, and in that mode is accessible even when there is a maximized program on the screen. The icons expand and show titles on mouseover and animate when you click them. I've put in as many icons as can fit on my screen at a size of 18 pixels and have set an expansion width of 5 icons and an expanded size of 64 pixels. You can change a lot of these settings and have various dock skins from DeviantArt to change the look of the launcher. The screen capture does not show the cursor, but as you can tell, it's resting on the AVG icon. You can also collect or create your own png or ico images to use to replace any of the default program icons. I've collected a few high-rez icon sets and made some of my own for a few of the programs in the dock.
Here is the dock as it would look if I used the BackInTime skin and placed it at the bottom of the screen in place of Winamp that's there now.
Of course this looked better in the period of my desktop odyssey I haven't documented here. In the previous incarnations I had fewer and larger icons on the dock at the bottom of the screen for my most often used programs and a full screen row of 16 pixel icons in ToolBox at the top. I then decided to just put everything into the RK dock and place it on the top instead to clean up the screen further.
I continue to use ToolBox on my USB drive to display my program icons on the desktops of computers I'm working on away from home.
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