I like the Mac OS X Dock. Combined with Exposé, I am very content with window management on the Mac. There are some however who find the labelled taskbar of Windows something to long for, and find themselves a little lost. I came about this app Fantasktik from Dockland software a while back, but didn’t give it much importance. Who needs a taskbar on Mac OS X I thought. However, curiosity got the better of me and I ended up taking it for a spin.  

What Fantasktik does is it puts a translucent auto-hiding taskbar right under your menubar. Each running app is shown there along with the number of windows it currently has. If it has windows, each of them is labelled alongside the icon. If the app is hidden, hovering over the label will bring up a small preview (very much like Vista’s thumbnail preview). I don’t see why it doesn’t bring up a preview for other apps as well, considering it may be in another Space. 

Fantasktik of course adds a lot of customisation features that allow you to make it work just like you want to. You can customise the colour, the size of the previews, the rounding of the corners, and also exclude any particular apps from showing up there. Let’s just say the preferences have been given a lot of importance here. 

In the end, everything works the way it’s supposed to, and the taskbar itself is fully functional. But I’m uninstalling it. For me it adds another layer of UI clutter which I don’t really need. I assume though that some people might need a taskbar like function, and for that fantasktik is a great app. At just $10 for a license, it doesn’t cost the earth. A 15 day trial awaits those wanting to try it out.