About Cairo Dock
It uses Cairo / OpenGL to render graphics (many in correlation with Compiz) with full hardware acceleration. It's fully configurable and fully customisable and can be used as a taskbar too. You can easily add applets in the dock or as a desklet. It is recommended to install the PLUG-INS package (cairo-dock-plug-ins) to have acces to more views, dialogs and many plug-ins and applets. Some screenshots are available : http://pics.glx-dock.org This package is the core of Cairo-Dock project.