Damn man! Apple should have kept him developing the Dock!! :cryin' shame:



There are so many cool and dare I say important features that could so easily be incorporated into the Dock..

how about text labels in the dock?

It's pretty clear that Apple wants the Dock to stay stupid-simple. If Apple has neglected to put features from DragThing into the Dock, I don't think it's because they're unable or haven't given it any attention (considering practically every new feature seems to be rolled into the Dock).

i would love the double click feature you mentioned along with getting rid of the dock all together for periods at a time. i don't mind the dock when i'm at home with my 20" lcd...but when i'm on the road with my 12" pb it does tend to get on my nerves.

�Pop-up Folders

But why in the world do you need to see the trash? Beyond whether there is something in it or not, which is pretty obvious from the icon (even when it's tiny).
I grant you it's annoying to have to go to the Dock to open the trash, but that is something I rarely do.
Mostly I ignore the trash. Command-Delete and Command-Shift-Delete are two of my favorite keyboard shortcuts. I even added a custom one for the Secure Delete option.

*The option to make hidden applications transparent should be GUI accessible. I am going to have to look that one up again.

*There should be some customizability of item grouping. But it's useless to talk about this because Apple seems categorically opposed to any real improvements. It's difficult to believe that OS X has gone through four major revisions with essentially a static Dock.

We know you don't think so. Please stay out of threads like this Chuckit. We'll call you if we need anyone apologizing Apple. Your reputation as apologist numero uno precedes you.

k thx by

Item grouping would be

Good idea Big Mac!!

As for Apple, they have changed the Dock a little bit. Perhaps a little less than the Finder. These are certainly aspects of the OS that seem to be in "maintainance mode" at Apple - I just can't imagine Apple has decided to never look at two of the most persistant elements in the Mac OS X experience, the Dock and the Finder.

I'd expect a major improvement of both in 10.5

Your rudeness is unwarranted, particularly since I wasn't defending Apple. I was saying it's good for DragThing fans that he didn't stay at Apple, because Steve would not have allowed him to put those features into the Dock even if he had stayed on that team.

Well please accept my apologies

That's pretty much all I do with the trash, how is it irrelevant? ... actually two commands are visible in the Finder menu, and of course there are the keyboard shortcuts already mentioned (cmd+shift+del / cmd+option+shift+del).

The trash is meant to hold stuff you plan to permanently delete. On the rare occasion you need to open the trash folder, the dock seems like a fair-enough place to reach it. Despite how small your dock becomes it is still pegged to one side, you don't have to *find* the icon. The other way you can visually reach the trash folder is via Finder / menunbar / go to folder or cmd+shift+G and enter the appropriate path. You could probably create your own shortcut key action to replicate that route and show the Trash folder that way. If you need to see the trash folder as often as it sounds perhaps you should re-examine your deleting habits.

Actually, they have everything to do with the Dock. Exposé and Dashboard are part of the Dock. Kill the Dock and you kill Exposé and Dashboard.

As mentioned above (early in the thread) I'm talking about the application launcher found by default at the bottom of the screen.

Nothing else, nothing connected to it in any abstract way. The Dock. Period. Not the Dock.app just the Dock part of the Dock app.

I don't mean to sound snidey but this thread just isn't about any other features of the Dock.app than the Dock.

"Change your deleting habits W-Y! Embrace the light!"

Yes two commands, you are correct. Three if you want to count the command when you hold down alt and choose "empty trash".

The background:

That is IMO irrelevant. I'm fine with those commands being in the Finder, I think most people are. That still doesn't make the Trash discoverable in the Finder nor a part of the Finder. If you could not see the Dock then the Trash would be an abstract invisible idea. You could command files and folders to dissapear to this "Trash" but they wouldn't be deleted until you chose "empty trash". That's why this is irrelevant, because visual interaction with the Trash is only found in the Dock. We can agree on that.

The Trash is indeed for stuff I'd like to permanently delete, at least plan to. I have a chance to change my mind, by opening the trash and dragging the file(s) I've decided to spare back to wherever. That means on occasion I would like to find the Trash and open it. Rare occation... perhaps? I usually throw things into the trash and empty it sometime later. When I've thrown other stuff in as well. Sometimes I check, just to be sure. Then I need to find the Trash. This is all anecdotal of course.

The issue:

It is twofold. On one hand if my suggestion of being able to hide the Dock permantely (i.e. turn it off) there would have to be another way to get to the Trash than through the Dock. Even on those rare occations that you would need/want to. On the other, while the Trash is pinned on one side of the Dock finding it with your mous isn't always that easy. The Dock is dynamic in size. The position of the Trash will always be on the right end of the Dock, but where will the right end of the Dock be exactly. Hard to predict, especially if you keep your Dock hidden most of the time. A minor inconvenience perhaps but it's not just width. The Dock changes size dynamically too. On a 12" PB/iBook monitor a crowded Dock with (not so) many open apps becomes very small. Icons shrink. The Trash shrinks too. Perhaps you'd like to keep your Dock small. It can be chosen to be very small. It will get pretty hard to drag and drop into the Trash.

There are many inconveniances of only being able to access the Trash through the Dock. Having the option of the Trash in the sidebar of Finder windows would always make the Trash accessable, clost to the file/folder you want to throw away and you can quickly glance over its contents. Certainly you could always use keyboard shortcuts to throw away things into the trash but the fact is sometimes you just have the mouse over the file/folder you want to delete and using it is just quicker than the key-combo. Using keyboard commands for commands is rather advanced. I have never seen a casual user get the hang of even the cmd-del for throwing in the Trash. It is second nature to nerds and nerds usually forget that there are just regular people out there with way different priorities. That was the target group for the Macintosh to begin with. The nerds chose Windows/DOS. I think there is a keyboard shortcut for everything in Windows. A mouse is technically un-necessary.

One final thought

Since the introduction of Mac OS X, a UNIX derivative (according to Apple) I have noticed one thing that has changed in the Mac user demograph. There has been a steady increase in nerds. See before OS X nerds wouldn't touch the Mac with a 10 foot cattle prod. They hated the OS, how it prevented you from customizing the innards, changing .ini files and such. No CLI access. Etc. So when OS X is introduced the Mac users start to get a lot of new recruits from the nerdy camp. Then again by acquireing NeXT, Apple itself got a whole bunch of nerds. There is no question about it. People who don't realize the difference between the Dock and the Dock.app, who cannot fathom that if Apple doesn't include something it could still be possible and people who would rather rely on keyboard shortcuts as their main way to interact with certain system operations rather than the graphical interface are becoming more and more common Mac users. A crying shame. Now I've been told ever so nicely I need to change my "deleting habits". I think I've heard it all.

Nerdyboys you're ok, but please remember most people can't type nearly as fast as you guys and don't have the symbiotic relationship with their keyboard as you guys seem to do.

I came over to the Mac side toward the end of the OS 9 era. I still like the way OS 9 did a few things (don't get me wrong, OS X is a vastly superior OS, in most ways). Shortcuts on the desktop for frequently used files & apps. A drop-down list of running applications in the upper-right corner of the menu bar that was there when you wanted it, and out of the way when you didn't. And the FREAKING TRASH CAN GOES ON THE FREAKING DESKTOP.

But Dashboard rocks, absolutely (just got my copy of Tiger in the mail yesterday).

I second this totally.

I would like in the Dock:

1. Pop-Up folders. Those things were just so damn handy in OS8 and OS9. While the right-click folder aliases in the Dock are a bit of that, they don't have spring loading and they aren't real folders. Give us Pop-up folders.

2. I think it would be very practical to have the Trash available in the metal Finder side bar. While it has become second nature to just Cmd-Backspace on items I don't want, I do often enough drag things from the Finder window to the Trash in the Dock. Having the Trash in the side bar would be very handy.

3. This would simply be an idea of presentation, so I doubt it would ever get implemented, is that I would love it if the running applications could have a better indicator than a little black arrow in them. Perhaps giving running apps a little background halo would be neat.

4. what would be nnicer than having to pin the Dock somewhere, would be to be able to drag it wherever one wanted to, like a tool palette.

5. I like the idea of having some kind of bay where all running windows are drawn.

Clearly Apple wants to keep the Dock simple. I imagine the Dock engineer could pony up a Dock which does what is requested here in 2 weeks at the max. That would leave us with a dock usable by power users at the risk of alienating non-power users. That includes putting too much crud in the Dock preferences.

You can already pin to the corners, for instance. Apple wrote the code. Tinkertool merely turns it on or off, graphically. Why do you want to expose this nonsense when the vast majority of people dont want it, or need it, and you have it already by fiddling with a plist.

Transparency is even more crud, that would take the engineer 2 minutes, plus the Dock preferences reworking. It may already be in there.

I agree with popup folders and the double click idea, however.

As far as DragThig goes. If you want that, and eulogise the engineer, buy it.

Why not expose it? If they're going to let you move the Dock around to different sides of the screen, it seems bizarre not to let people control pinning.


An option for single- or double-clicking in the Dock is probably useful to fewer people than more positioning options. I agree that it would be a good thing, but it seems to me that you're just going by what you want rather than what actually makes sense or serves a reasonable purpose.