There's two things Id like to do if possible. I want the activation key to be a toggle. Right now, setting a hotkey for activation is only one way, I would like to be able to press it again and hide it back on the desktop. Second, I am using a dock as a replacement taskbar. I'd like the names of the programs and folders to display permanently so that I can see them without having to hover over them. Sometimes it is difficult to find particular folders when I have many open. I would not mind binding a hotkey to toggle displaying names if that would work.

I am open to AHK scripting if necessary.

bump

Sorry, looks like I missed your post.

I'm not sure about that toggle thing, I'll have to think about it, but at first glance I don't agree. After all, the dock can be made to auto-hide by simply moving the mouse away from it.

As for permanent labels on the dock, that's a big negative, sorry. Bruce Tognazzini himself recognizes this as one of the limitations of docks (see points 8 and 7 HERE) but his solution is NOT to put labels on docks (it wouldn't be a dock anymore then, but some kind of a glorified menu) but to use something else instead to show such objects.

If you are running Nexus Ultimate you have the Shelf (tabbed dock), which can display labels below the icons and has a Tasks tab. If you are running Winstep Xtreme, you can also use NextSTART menus to display the list of currently running applications.

I agree with this request - a toggle feature would prove quite useful for a tablet computer with a touch screen interface where you don't have a mouse and therefore may not want the dock to auto-hide after a given delay. The toggle hotkey could be mapped to one of the hardware buttons on the tablet bezel, for example. In such a setup, the conditions for the dock auto-hiding should be either pressing the activation toggle again, or launching a selection/application on the dock itself.

now i can see a small(very small) button on both workshelf, and nexus for temporarily keeping them in focus while you preform various task in them. i do get tired of moving an item from one tab to another then having to bring the shelf back up and mouse to the tab i was last in so i can finish what i was doing.

No idea what you mean by "now i can see a small(very small) button on both workshelf, and nexus for temporarily keeping them in focus", sorry.

As for moving items between tabs without the Shelf collapsing in between, all you need to do is manually raise the Shelf first by clicking on the right mini-tab. This will keep the Shelf up until you manually collapse it again.

the right mimi-tab button is not keeping the shelf open til i click on it again to collapse it. it is still auto collapsing.

Really? Try the following then: click the right mini-tab button to raise/un-collapse the shelf. Now move the mouse away from the Shelf, or click on another window, for instance, and wait.

Does the Shelf still collapse automatically after a short delay? My guess is that it won't.

now so we are on the same page you are talking about the down arrow on the rightside of the shelf?

If the symbol on it looks like a down arrow or not depends on the current theme, but it's the last tab at the far right of the Shelf, the one smaller than the other normal tabs (which is why it's called 'mini-tab' ), same size as the left mini-tab which is used to access Preferences, etc...

ok so we are talking about the same thing then. no it doesn't keep the shelf open. left or right clicking.

Please don't make me waste time searching for issues that aren't there, Chucky!

1. Make sure the Shelf is collapsed.

2. Left click the right mini-tab. What exactly happens?

it auto collapses just like i said.

ok under shelf / behavior / advance i checked "hide or collaopse only when other windows have the focus. exactly what i was looking for. works perfect now.

edit: i may have unchecked this in the past because of needs then. not sure though.

It doesn't matter what "Hide or collaopse only when other windows have the focus" is set to. When you click the right mini-tab of a collapsed Shelf, the Shelf un-collapses (and not auto-collapses, like you said) and stays up.

If you *then* click the right mini-tab again, the Shelf collapses - but this is not 'auto-collapsing', it is a manually initiated action.