Do you want to use the Dock the way it was meant to be used or do you want to fight it forever?
If you’re a lover, not a fighter, and ignoring one of the most useful organizational tools any OS has ever presented to ordinary users strikes you as a waste, drag your hard drive icon into the right side of the dock and leave it there. Forever. Apple should ship all Macs this way, by the way. Are you listening Cupertino?
With your hard drive now safely tucked in the Dock, just click and hold on the hard drive icon to get a hierarchical menu of everything on your Mac or click the hard drive icon once to open it up in a Finder window. Then you can turn off “Show hard disks on the desktop” in the Finder’s Preferences if you like. (If you are a long time Mac user, you may not be able to bring yourself to do this, so leave the hard drive icon on the desktop, too, if you can’t bear it not being there.) We know we can’t do it; our hard drive icons are all in the dock and on the desktop, too. We do have one machine without hard drives on the desktop. We’re slowly getting used to it and can see the day when we’d actually consider turning off the desktop hard drive icons! Oh, the humanity!
With you hard drive’s icon in the dock, it will always be accessible no matter what. And, for Steve’s sake, turn OFF Magnification in the Dock and make the Dock as small as possible – the text labels of the icons should be enough to identify the icons, if you can’t seem to remember which icon is which. Without magnification, it’s a lot easier to click a static icon than trying to click a moving target all day long. If, rather than fighting it, you embrace the Dock (Classic Mac users seem to have the most Dock issues) Mac OS X will seem a lot quicker and productive.
See the Mac OS X Dock in action and learn more about the Dock here.
MacDailyNews Note: This piece is a reworked article based on a piece from October 2002 and is posted today as a public service for all those still walking around with their overly-giant Mac OS X Docks empty of hard drive icons and set to maximum magnification.
Sounds like my OS9 setup with GoMac’s Start Menu plus duplication in the Apple menu — the mouse goes to the nearest alternative
My Tip…
1. Turn on full key board access.
2. Set Keyboard Navigation>Focus on Dock to (I use) ctrl+D.
3. Place your Application, Documents (or any folder) in the dock.
4. Press ctrl+d and then use your arrow keys to navigate to the item you need hit return and there it is !
5. I hide the dock on the right to save vertical space and when you use the keyboard command the dock pops out and goes away when done.
6. And for you Laptop users set expose to the fn key just a quick tap and…
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What I love the most about OSX is how customizable it is. Five people close to me use Macs, and none of us use it the same way. I use the dock, but keep it hidden. I use Tinkertool to anchor it in the lower right corner. (Isn’t it about time that Apple brought that setting out of hiding?) I use DragThing to access my most common apps and folders, but have the Applications folder in the dock for quick menu access to more rarely-accessed apps.
My fiance can’t stand the dock, and keeps it as small as possible and off to the side. She has multiple DragThing docks all over the edges of her screen to get everywhere.
My best friend keeps the dock small, on the right side, anchored to the top right, where it performs the job he used to use the DragThing process dock for.
There’s no wrong way to use a Mac, just lots and lots of different right ways!
I use aDock to keep all my drives and utilities in, I used aDock in 9 just like I use the dock now. It works, though I would like apple to make multiple docks available as part of the system.
larry. yes splotlight will launch apps too and with it’s additional window launch it blows away launch bar or quicksilver…
simple no comparison.
is there some way to have the hard drive on the left?
There are times that the Dock seems in the way with some applications, even with hiding on. Some of you might try putting it at the TOP. It takes a while to get used to it there and you may want to move it elsewhere sometimes, but the top is often out of the way. You can use TinkerTool (free) to move it there. Mine is not always there, but it is sometimes useful to me.
I do use some degree of magnification. Easier to see for me.
i find keycommands the quickest way to navigate round my documents apple-n for my docs window then a quick successsion of typing first letter of client and apple-down arrow to open folder, i’ve got it off to a tee : )
this also helps with my rsi, not forever reaching for the mouse…
still use doc tho for my most used apps
it is getting confusing – because we’re spoilt. There is XMenu – which is great with its hierarchic file menu from the menu bar, and it is free on top of it – and Drop Drawers for all kinds of app’s, and snippets of information, folder aliases, photo’s. I did not like the dock – and even with the tip of this page, I don’t. Starting an app via the HD alias in the dock remains slow.
Then there is Butler, and Sputnik (and similar launchers)…
But thanks for the tip to minimize the dock and have it disappear in a corner with TinkerTool. I can now hardly see it. I have even tried DockBlock… that, however, was perhaps too drastic, as the possibility to switch windows with Cmd-tab is linked to the dock.
“Why is it that such a large portion of the population feels compelled to tell others what they should do?”
Amen! I think new users would be much better served if they received advice as to what the Dock can do, and then left to figure out on their own how best to make these capabilities work for them. I don’t keep drives on the Desktop (except my local iDisk, a great feature, or in the Dock either. The only things on the right side of my Dock are my home folder and the Trash. I access everything else through contextual menus courtesy Ittec, a prefpane utility that allows me to navigate my entire filesystem, drag files to different locations, even preview graphics, all with a tap on my trackpad. Their homepage doesn’t seem to be responding at the moment, so here’s the MacUpdate download link. This is the single most useful third-party add on I have yet discovered, and in conjunction with the Dock, indispensible for me now.
I had my HD in the Dock until Panther. Now with the Sidebar it’s easier to hit the Finder icon in the Dock and one more click on whichever favourite you need …
Hierarchical file/folder navigation would improve a lot if current latencies were eliminated. Folders and Volumes in the Dock are painfully slow to react to clicking’n’holding. The same goes for Contextual Menus, etc. Also, why the Dock doesn’t support springloaded folders when the Toolbar does?
What most third party utilities as NowMenus and such have in common is that they react almost instantly to user demands. That’s what make them useful. That, and the fact that they usually allow for usermade hierarchies and far bigger quantities of items than the Dock. There was a reason tabbed folders became so popular. I’d really wish for, say, “sub-Docks”.
My hope is that Dashboard allows for some sort of megaDock utility that plays with the entire screen surface instead of a single row or coulumn.
I like the Dock, but it won’t be a full-fledged desktop replacement for me until docked folders are spring-loaded and removable media can be made to appear in the dock when loaded.
Juanxer: I’ve found that the latency in the “clink’n’hold” can be reduced to an acceptable level by control- or right-clicking on dock items.
I prefer customizing my apple menu with fruitmenu and switching my apps with asm. Lets just say I’m old skool =D
To bad you can’t have the best of both worlds with out 3rd party hacks.
Oh, Windowshade X rocks!!!
I’ve always had my dock between 1/8″ and 1/4″ high. I’m experimenting with a 1/8″ size and 1/4″ magnification, although I dearly wish I could TURN OFF the $&#$*(! ripple effect.
I also wish that I could tell any app Not to show itself. If it doesn’t have a useful dock menu, I don’t want to see it.
I have just today found a delightful toy that makes the dock soooo much nicer for me. It’s called Dock Separators from [url=http://www.ipassion.it]http://www.ipassion.it[/url] and it’s basically a bunch of “separator bar” icons with the application biut set. Go take a look! My docki is a little wider now but much easier to work with.
Re: Dock Separators – unless you read Italian, you’ll probably be happier getting this from Versiontracker.com
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