tfussell/mandarin

A graphical application launcher written in C#

mandarin is a graphical application launcher written in C#/WPF for Windows© in the style of Docky or Cairo-Dock. It is currently a work-in-progress and is not quite ready for general use.

Features

• Full shell integration. This includes JumpLists (the list of items shown when a Taskbar button is right-clicked), Notification Area (the area on the right of the taskbar used for notifications and background applications), Live Thumbnail Previews, progress indicators, and Aero Peek.
• Extensibility. A new type of dock item can be created simply by extending the DockItem class and implementing a few methods.
• Customisability. Any number of docks can be created each with its own theme. If you don't like the built-in icon for an application, a new one can be selected.
• Functionality. mandarin attempts to provide all the functionality of the standard taskbar while enabling added functionality through custom widgets and styling.

Building mandarin

Building mandarin should be easy, though it hasn't yet been tested it on many environments. It requires a minimum of Microsoft© .NET Framwork v4 and Windows 7.

mandarin's Issues

ContextMenu Background Image

There are seams in the background image on context menus. The background should be disabled/replaced or fixed.

Separator->dock resizing

Add activity indicator to dock items

An activity indicator is a small image in proximity to an application icon which should show if any process with the same registered AppUserModelId is currently running. This should only apply to application dock items.

Test on Windows 8

Some things which affect this program may have changed in Windows 8. Try running this application on a Win8 machine to evaluate the difficulty in extending support to Windows 8.

Reflections

Reflections (flipped and transparent images) on dock items would make the dock look better.

Some way to close a dock

Right now the dock can only be closed using the debugger or task manager. There should be some built-in way to close it (context menu or notify icon?).

Create an installer

Single context menu per dock

Activity Indicator

Currently, there is no way to tell if an application is running or not. There should be some sort of indicator (see Docky) showing the running state of the associated program.

Implement Drag/Drop Functionality

Shell-style drag/drop functionality should show a draggable thumbnail of the dragged item. This can be compared to standard WPF drag/drop which shows a simple black and white cursor during the operation. The shell portion of the code exists, it just needs to be integrated with item groups.

Model PropertyChanged Event Listeners

All ViewModels should listen for changes in their model and update their state accordingly.