Tabbed docks start up time

There's one thing I've noted with tabbed dock across various systems and OS's. Tabbed docks takes a notiable longer time to load than normal docks.

For my setup I have one normal dock with the most used applications. Quicklaunch soft of. Then I have a tabbed dock where I add the programs which I normally use in my workflow. I'm launching nearly every app from objectdock rather than the start menu as I find it so much more organized.

However, then I start OD, which starts with Windows, the normal docks pops up immeidatly, while the tabbed dock takes much longer. I realise that at Windows startup lots of things is going on, but this behaciour also happens when I start OD manually after all the windows startup is all done. And it occurs on multiple system.

So I was wondering is it's possible, or considered to improve on the tabbed docks load time?

13,771 views 20 replies
Reply #1 Top

I've never noticed this, however, I don't have a ton of tabs and icons on my tabbed dock.  How many tabs.  How many icons.  This may be the culprit coupled with your box's specs...

Reply #2 Top

While I agree with the number of tabs/icons point, I have been using five dock layouts for years now and I do have to agree with the original poster.  It seems as though Object Dock Plus never "caches" the icons once a layout if complete and does a very simplistic read everything from scratch one by one at startup time. 

Now Vista has its own caching algorithm which seems to help this greatly, so I really haven't noticed this since moving up to Vista/64.  But on XP it was quite a long wait indeed.

Reply #3 Top

I never really considered it problematic but ya I see a longer load time with tabbed docks too (XPHome).

Reply #4 Top

My tabbed dock on the system I'm sitting on now got 10 tab and 129 items total including spacers. It's a mix of appliation shortcuts and well as documents and folder shortcut.

Reply #5 Top

How many tabs. How many icons. This may be the culprit coupled with your box's specs...

Adding to this, another determining factor could be where are the tab's icons that you're using located, such as a large subdirectory, proprietary folder or another drive.  This takes an amount of seek-time as well.

k1  

never really considered it problematic but ya I see a longer load time with tabbed docks too

k1  

While I agree with the number of tabs/icons point, I have been using five dock layouts for years now and I do have to agree with the original poster

k1  

I agree with you both.

I don't look at it as a problem, but my system does wait for my five single tabs longer than anything else on boot.  I see nothing detrimental towards the over-all system behavior, because all I start up with is OD, WB and a wall. 

And I would imagine the work-around could be not to launch Object Dock at startup if you don't like the way it's booting.

I guess you can sit with a stopwatch to see the difference in nanoseconds.

But since I asked my system to launch OD on boot, to me it's worth waiting.  So use these apps to your liking but it's also our discretion in determining what's best for our system's behavior pattern.

Cp

:thumbsup:  

Reply #6 Top

Also, the systems I run have either XP Pro or Vista Ultimate, dual cores and 2-4GB RAM.

Reply #7 Top

Also, the systems I run have either XP Pro or Vista Ultimate, dual cores and 2-4GB RAM.

 

I'd say maybe CP hit it if you've got a rig like that.  Are all the icons buried in deep folders?

Reply #8 Top

The icon paths?

I wouldn't know. It'd depend on the application, I've not bothered to apply any icon theme. Just plain old default icons.

 

The startup speed isn't a major issue, but since I use OD as my main appliation launcher it'd be nice if loading speed could be improved.

 

I just closed OD, waited 30seconds, then launched it again for an rough timing. The normal dock, with 5 icons, load in about half a second. The tabbed dock appears after about 10 seconds.

Doesn't feel like OD scales well with larger number of items. And I don't feel that the item count I have is excessive either.

Reply #9 Top

Doesn't feel like OD scales well with larger number of items. And I don't feel that the item count I have is excessive either

Ok, but is it depreciated behavior that's getting progressively slower, or has it always worked this way for you Thom?

Because even if you're just loading several apps with their default icons into tabs, think about all a system has to do to find those apps in your system.

My tabs grabs the programs I've assigned from my primary C Drive, but I keep my custom icons that I typically use on my external USB D Drive.

I just turned my 2 docks and 5 single tabs off, waited 5 minutes and turned them back on while I'm typing this and my docks launched instantly and my 5 tabs took 1 second to relaunch after my docks.  That's about 60 apps with custom icons between 2 seperate drives.  Not bad.

And that's on XP Home.

Are you trimming the fat off your primary drive, keeping it clean, defraged, registry clean, anti-spy, anti-virus, above 50% used space?

Hopefully some of the stuff we share here can help.

Cp

:puke:  

Reply #10 Top

My directories are HUGE.  Is there any way to auto-move all the images I am actually using into a new directory, so I can purge the original safely?

Reply #11 Top
Tabbed docks have always taken longer for me to load. And I keep my systems as lean as possible. All apps and icons are located on C. I don't see why a system has to do much work to load icons, with the full path there it knows where to find it. Opening the startmenu with loads of icons doesn't take long. Nor does an explorer window with thousands of files in it. Normal docks seems snappy as anything no matter what I load onto them.
Reply #12 Top

Now that you mention it, mine kind of does the same thing, although i never gave it any thought until now, now i watch and wait LOL, no big deal whats a few seconds, we are all in so much of a hurry all the time,

Reply #13 Top

hehe, it's like mentioning a small noise while watching TV, isn't it?

Reply #14 Top

The dev is now aware.

Now we wait for free cycles.  :)

Reply #15 Top

Now we wait for free cycles

:time:   :X *_* :puke: x_x

Reply #16 Top

Quoting Zubaz, reply 14
The dev is now aware.

Now we wait for free cycles. 

That's great.

Should I create a support ticket for this?

Reply #17 Top

Should I create a support ticket for this?
Can't hurt.

Reply #18 Top

Any news on new releases of ObjectDock?

Reply #19 Top

hm... earlier it was possible to log into a page where it listed all your support tickets... is it still around?

Reply #20 Top

As I mentioned it in another thread, my tabbed dock takes very long to boot as well. I'll concentrate my input in this thread now :)