Kiba-dock returns

Ubuntu on Inspiron 1501 was again the saviour. This method still works in Hardy Heron, with one exception - the systray icon. So here, with my tweak, are the steps:

1. Uninstall any current installation by searching for kiba and akamaru in Synapatic.
2. Delete any kiba-dock folders in home and usr/share.
3. In terminal (less the asterisk which marks each new entry)-
* sudo apt-get install automake1.9 build-essential cvs libpango1.0-dev libgtk2.0-dev libgconf2-dev libglitz-glx-dev librsvg2-dev checkinstall libglade2-dev
* wget http://usuarios.lycos.es/abrahamtamayo/kiba-dock-0.1.tar.bz2
* tar -xf kiba-dock-0.1.tar.bz2
* cd kiba-dock
* ./autogen.sh
* make
* make install-schemas
* sudo make install
* kiba-dock
4. in System/Preferences/Sessions/start-up add Kiba-dock with command 'kiba-dock'
5. right click on nascent blue dock to open the settings app
6. drag launchers to dock from top menu (including drop-downs)

Note - kiba-dock will only start from the command line 'kiba-dock' or on logon (start up)

Tweaking the settings

The first thing I did was change all the background colours for the dock and text to whites and greys and reduce the opacity of each to 30%. I prefer the default background option to the gradient because you get an interesting 'carousel' effect as you run your mouse along the dock. I also removed the border from the text background.

The default model for the launchers is 'dock'. I tried 'wobbly' but that made all the launcher icons bunch up. 'Spring for all' immediately scattered them across the screen. 'Rope' works well. But I prefer the independent springing of each launcher when you grab and release, so I've stuck with the 'dock' model. The default distance for 'rope' is 10.5. Adjusting that doesn't affect the 'dock' model. On the 'effects' tab, I left 'rotate' on execute and mouseover unchecked because corners tend to get cut off with this effect. The default pulsar is 'e17 pulse'. 'Zoom' is also good - rather like the Mac OSX dock zoom. 'Pulse' is less compelling. The default zoom factor is 2 for Pulsar and 1.3 for Zoom. Adjusting that to 3 made the animation lag a little under Zoom and made e-17 pulse unworkable. Bottom line - defaults were best. Under the 'dock' tab, I enabled auto-hide on the tab of the same name.