How to change Docky orientation (left, right, top) ?

Right now you cannot. Top orientation will be in 0.8.1. if you can submit a
mockup for how to do summon mode on the left or right that is not butt ugly,
we will consider side orientation.

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--Alex Launi

I see it difficult to show text vertically.
IMHO, have docky on sides implies keeping summon mode horizontal on bottom or top.
Do you have any mockups already ? This looks a bit obvious :
http://img255.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sumontopgd3.png

well, one way to do it would be to keep the vertical dock fully visible, and just have a horizontal pane extend from the gnome-do icon for normal gnome-do typing.

Like I said, give us a mockup.

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--Alex Launi

pardon my poor art skills:

http://img91.imageshack.us/my.php?image=gnomedoverticaldesigntw5.png

Why keep the dock fully visible then ?

why not? I figure as long as it doesn't actively distract or take up real estate it is fine.

or, if you still don't like it, you could use that vertical part for something else like your options.... hmmm maybe I'll mock that up in my bad vector drawing skills....

okay, here's the a mockup

http://img262.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dockyidea2rj7.png

there are two idea here, but both are basically the same. The vertical dock actually becomes something like a list of choices that rearrange with more text input or arrow keys.

 how I first thought of it is in the lower right, having the dock slide up and down to allign

but a second idea is in the lower left, just have the dock components cycle

I kind of like this even more than the current implementation of docky because as it is now, there is very little benefit to having docky rather than having something like AWN and also gnome-do (basically, it seems like consolidation of plugins is the nicest feature of having them within on system). With the vertical docky, the contents and the order of the dock inform your gnome-do actions, at least as far as priority and order go.

First thing I thought when using Docky was "whoa, I love that it's sitting at the bottiom but I wish it could be left- or right-aligned so i would have some better use of my laptop widescreen area in one side".

Like, having the dock in the bottom but having the option to push it to the sides and, when hovering, only expanding to one side. would that be impossible? Because it would be sweet as nectar.

Just another mockup:

http://oneend.on.ohost.de//img/vertical-docky-mockup.png

As Alex Launi wrote already top orientation is supported, but it I couldn't find it documented anywhere. Fortunatly it was quite easy to find:

With the gconf-editor (start 'gconf-editor' with [Alt] + [F2]) edit the key:

/apps/gnome-do/preferences/Docky/Utilities/DockPreferences/Orientation

Change the value from 'Bottom' to 'Top' and restart Gnome-do.

I really like gnome do docky a lot. I second the suggestion for making it configurable to be positioned to the left / right side of the screen. It is indeed much more convenient for modern widescreen laptops (and regular screens). Cheers, mayoban

One more vote for left or right orientation. Vertical space is both more limited and more important than horizontal and having docky eat up 50 pixels is painful (no, autohide is not really a solution, just an ugly workaround.)

Dudes and dudettes, I have a solution to this issue- let docky not be a theme, but an extension, if you will. Details aqui- https://bugs.launchpad.net/do/+bug/395991

As the Fiddler points out, vertical space is limited, so the intelligent task list would have to be much smaller, unless something like this was done:

http://bgautomotive.co.uk/images/docky-corner-flow.png

Obviously I'm no graphic artist either. But how about flowing round corners? The dock would flow all around the screen and meet at the other side. You could have corner orientation too (where the "centre" of the dock is in a corner). Of course Intellihide would have to become Geniushide to cope with all this ;)

There are a few problems to solve along the way. It'd be a pretty unique feature though, right?

Actually the corner idea is kind of interesting. I'll make sure Jason sees
this. It unfortunately still has the issue of summon not being easy to do
elegantly.

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-- Alex Launi