“Those of you who use Windows on a regular basis are undoubtedly very familiar with the taskbar that has been a part of the operating system since Windows 95. It has a variety of components, and although we’ve been able to work with it for quite some time, it’s by no means a perfect representation of what a taskbar should be. For example, if you have an abundance of open items sitting on your taskbar, they can begin to become crammed together, and when this happens, the buttons for each item start to shrink, and this causes any of the useful information that may have been contained within to become just another glob of goop on your taskbar,” Brandon Watts writes for OSWeekly.
Watts writes, “Windows XP does contain a feature called taskbar grouping that can group the taskbar buttons of several windows from the same application into one button, and this helps to some extent, but even with this approach, you’re still not getting the whole picture at a glance.”
Watts writes, “Aside from the taskbar, the dock presents open applications and frequently used programs in its own unique way. When you think of the dock, you probably think of OS X, however, the dock has been around longer than Apple’s latest versions of its operating system; and you can see this by looking at NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP. Apple’s version is so memorable because they redefined what a dock was, and they then launched it into the mainstream. Computer users suddenly realized that the Windows taskbar isn’t the only solution, and experimentation with this newfangled dock started to take place.”
Watts writes, “Personally, I prefer the dock to the Windows taskbar, and it’s one of the things that really drew me to OS X… it’s nice to look down at the dock and see, in a graphical way, how many e-mail messages and RSS feed entries are available for me to read. Instead of having to open the applications to see this information, it’s already right in front of my face, so I know what to expect. In certain cases, when an application is working on something, you’ll even see a graphical progress bar. It’s also nice to see a snapshot of the content of a window when you minimize it to this dock.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We’d prefer a root canal to the Windows taskbar. We’re interested to hear your ideas on how to make the Mac OS X Dock even better and also how you use your Dock. For example, we run our Mac OS X Docks as small as possible, always visible, on the bottom, with magnification disabled (the text rollovers and our grouping and memories work for us to quickly locate what we need. The magnification, while pretty, tends to slow us down since hitting a moving target isn’t as efficient as a stationary one.) We also place folders and hard drive icons in the right side of the Dock on all of our Macs; why Apple doesn’t ship Macs with the hard drive already in the Dock by default is beyond us. We also use Dock separators; Apple should give us something like them as a built-in option. How do you use your Dock?
Why mess with perfection? We are already decades ahead of the competition.
I prefer hidden with magnification and a folder containing aliases to frequently visited places and apps. but I also use You Control to access many things quickly (kind of replaces the Apple Menu from OS9.
I tie my boat up to it.
I use Mac OS X and Windows (unfortunately). The dock is far more elegant. The only thing worth mentioning about the task bar is the start menu. For all the things about windows I hate, I love the start menu and having quick access to all my applications.
You can simulate this on the dock by dragging an alias of the applications folder to the dock. Now the only drawback is the short delay before it opens. So the dock is better in nearly every way aside from the before mentioned delay.
I don’t put the dock at the bottom because I need as much display of Word, or Excel, documents as possible. Putting hte dock at the bottom detracts from the document.
I have the dock placed on the left without magnification.
The only plus the Taskbar has over the Dock, I suppose, is the ability to launch applications from it via keyboard shortcuts. For example, Ctrl+1 launches the first app in the taskbar.
If there is a way to do this in the Dock, PLEASE LET ME KNOW!
:~)
I use my Dock like this…
I have ONLY open apps in my dock. Since I use Quicksilver I don’t need to keep shortcuts to frequently used apps. I also make it as small as possible with NO magnification and keep it in the right hand corner of my screen.
Two monitor set-up with dock on the left, auto-hide, no magnification.
Where the Dock excels is muscle memory. I always know that Mail, Address, Book, Safari, and iChat are on the left side, and Transmit, BBEdit and any non-docked app is on the right, then I can begin moving towards my target without knowing exactly where it is yet.
Compare that with the Windows Taskbar.. one must carefully read each item to know what is it.
I keep the dock hidden and magnification on slightly, also dock is located at the bottom of the screen.
right side, no magnification. (maximizing vertical space on small laptop screen).
boxers, to the right.
Bobby: I actually use Windows all the time as well, and find that the “Start” window is the worst abomination Microsoft has inflicted on the world. Magnified by the fact that on Linux, KDE and Gnome both saw fit to copy it!
Given that I usually only use a subset of the applications on my computer 99% of the time, the Dock + Spotlight gives me the best way to start applications. On Windows I emulate this as best as possible by having applications “quick linked” next to the start bar and Google Desktop search for the Spotlight replacement.
I place the dock on the right, hidden, with no magnification. This works well almost all the time, except when mousing near the right edge of the screen when accessing a palette in photoshop for example.
Heh. Some people never get used to the Dock. My wife still can’t stand it, after nearly 5 years of Mac use. She shrinks it to miniscule size and hides it on the right where she’ll never accidentally activate it. She uses DragThing to put the trash can on the desktop.
Me? I just want to know when the ability to pin the Dock to a corner is going to become official. Every new Mac I buy, I install TinkerTool just to do one thing — put the Dock on the bottom and pin it to the lower-right corner of the screen. Then I hide it. It’s perfect this way! The trash can is exactly where I’d expect it to be, but only when I want to see it.
Dock on the bottom, as small as possible with only applications I use frequently, auto hide, no magnification.
I agree the Dock is far better then windows taskbar.
Bottom. Hidden. Medium size. Magnification is on, but only so that it gives a subtle visual feedback. Not so much that it creates a moving target.
It wouldn’t bother me if the hard drives were shown in the dock, but unlike MDN, I don’t have them there. I have the apps folder and utility folder, but I don’t really uset hose any more. If I want Grab, I just type command-space grab, cursor down and hit return.
As for the start menu being faster, well yes, to start with, but locating anything in it is a pain, and sometimes windows will not show you everything, but will hide things it thinks you’re no longer interested in behind a chevron.
OS-X’s insistence on a flat structure for the apps folder (except where it twists ther rules, a la iWork), is about the only thing I don’t like. My way around it was to have a structured nested set of folders containing aliases of my apps and utilities (i.e. Final Cut, Quicktime etc under ‘video’ etc).
But, as I said, that’s redundant with spotlight.
I wish the Dock had a way to let you know how many windows for a particular application are open (ex. number of Word documents open or number of browser windows open) and to switch between them easily.
One of my favorite system add-ons is “Witch”, which (no pun intended) allows you to do just that – view and switch between open windows of an app or switch into another app. It works similar to “command-tab” and best of all, it’s free!
I prefer the Dock to the Task Bar by a long shot, but neither is a perfect app launcher for me. I place my most-used apps in the Dock permanently, but everything else (about 100 or so other apps) I leave out. I use LaunchBar to find and launch what I need, and this combination works very well.
I previously kept my Dock small with magnification off. But I found I kept click the wrong icon. I’m sure this is due to my poor eye-hand coordination. But I found that turning on a slight magnification slows me down just enough, and increases the target icon just large enough, to prevent nearly all the accidental launches.
cubert: i get around that problem by using cmd-tab to switch apps and setting expose to show application windows at the bottom right hot corner. want to know how many pdfs i have open? cmd-tab to preview, mouse down to the bottom right. bam.
It would be nice to be able to have a Dock item magnify even though Magnify is off by hovering the cursor over the item and pressing the space bar (for example). And it would be nice if the Dock were projected above the computer and controllable with mental commands.
mdn, do you realise that you’ve got napster ads on your site now? i thought you didn’t allow ads for any company you didn’t believe in?
Top Ten Nine Reasons the Apple Dock Still Sucks:
The Dock is big and clumsy
Identical icons look identical
Dock objects have no labels
Dock objects need color
The Trash Can belongs in the corner
The Dock’s locations are unpredictable
The Dock is a sprawler
The Dock replaced better objects
The Dock adds bad behavior
The Dock’s sole positive attribute lies in its improving the Mac’s “curb appeal” and demoability.
Apple would appear to be after two separate and distinct market segments. First, the naive consumer who isn’t going to do much with his or her computer anyway. OS X, with its suite of simple apps would appear to be a good fit.
The other extreme they appear to want are self-identified power users. Why else all the talk about the UNIX underpinning, about “munitions-grade” computing power?
OS X is a powerful operating system. It deserves a top-level interface that matches. The old Mac handled both sets of users handily. OS X, with its powerful underpinnings and slick graphics support has the potential to do much better. However, the focus on this single object to the exclusion of the kind of information tools power users need must stop. Keep the Dock as long as it helps close sales, but provide the real tools needed by people with serious work.
http://www.asktog.com/columns/044top10docksucks.html
I use a Butler menu with custom categories by app function or document types or tasks. I can access 98% of what I need through that menu, including windows dedicated to certain tasks with app or document aliases. The dock is my alternative simple launcher and occasional app switcher, but I could do without its intrusion on my screen. A task window is like a dock, only it has an extra dimension. Close it and it’s gone, unlike the dock which hangs around when you don’t need it. I’d rather have it related to the menu bar somehow.
Same goes for the sidebar; I prefer narrow windows in list view for long lists or icon view for task folders. Saved documents sometimes become a moving target in list view. Weird.
Three monitors, dock at right, hidden, default size, no magnification. I use Drag Thing as my application launcher (centered bottom). Dock is basically demoted to let me know when I got mail or an application needs attention from the bouncing icon. Give me a tabbed dock to organize my similar applications and I’d be happy. I count 66 applications alone right now in my Drag Thing which would overwhelm the dock.
I think the Dock is a nasty piece of eyecandy. I’ve used Macs since 1992, OSX for 4 years.
Here’s my work around:
1. ‘DockBlock’ quits and launches the Dock instantly. http://www.sideburn.com/dockblock/ (this is what Apple should have BUILT IN to OSX all along… CHOICE!!)
2. ‘Butler’ keeps a neat row of your favourite App icons permanently in the right-hand free space of the menubar, drag & drop, launch. etc http://www.petermaurer.de
3. expand ‘Recent Items’ in the Apple menu to include 20 or so of your latest documents, for easy access
4. ‘Windowshade X’ returns collapsible windows throughout OSX. http://www.unsanity.com/
5. Oh, and any number of free desktop trash cans available to download
Works perfectly!! no Dock eyecandy getting in the way of my projects, hogging screen space, sitting over Application pallets, jumping up and down, being a moving target etc, trying to be ‘clever’ in the distinctly Windows Clippy way.
Cubert – right-click on the icon in the doc. Shows you all the windows the app has open and allows you to activate the one you want.