[fisherKing]

anyway to stop this?

i know i can turn off bouncing when opening apps...what about when they want my attention?

i'd gladly take responsiblity to seek out apps that need attention
(& would prefer that to them demanding my attention)


any thoughts/ideas??

[Randman]

Dock Detox. Find it at versiontracker.

[ManOfSteal]

Originally posted by Randman:
Dock Detox. Find it at versiontracker.

Dock Detox v1.2 from Unsanity...

[fisherKing]

brilliant, thanx!

[SSharon]

And send feedback to apple is this is one of the most irritating behaviors of the OS. We should not need a third party app for this (but its great that its available.

[TETENAL]

If you want an application icon to stop bounce, click and hold it so that the menu shows. No need for Dock-Detox.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by TETENAL:
If you want an application icon to stop bounce, click and hold it so that the menu shows. No need for Dock-Detox.

Or, of course, you could pay attention to it. The whole point of the exercise is precisely to grab the user's attention.

[Thinine]

This is completely under the control of the app doing the bouncing. If it doesn't have an option to turn it off, talk to the app maker. This isn't Apple's problem.

[Turnpike]

Originally posted by Millennium:
Or, of course, you could pay attention to it. The whole point of the exercise is precisely to grab the user's attention.

and yes, this is up to the application itself, not the OS. the OS just allows this behavior, which is much better than popping things up in front of everything when they desperately need attention.

[Cadaver]

There is a setting in the Appearance control panel (ok, preference pane) to turn off bouncing while launching an application.

[ManOfSteal]

Originally posted by Cadaver:
There is a setting in the Appearance control panel (ok, preference pane) to turn off bouncing while launching an application.

Umm, there is?

[MartiNZ]

Kind of ... except it's in the dock preference pane .

A while back someone posted a way to stop all the bouncing through a simple command line command. I applied that and nothing has bounced since ... I just can't remember how it went, maybe a search would find it.

[Cadaver]

Originally posted by MartiNZ:
Kind of ... except it's in the dock preference pane .

Oooops. Sorry. Dock pref pane is correct. "Animate opening applications."

[MartiNZ]

Okay found what I was talking about by searching for bouncing dock .

From the 'Panther hot keys, tips and tricks' thread:

Gorgonzola wrote

defaults write com.apple.dock no-bouncing -bool true

will shut off the spastic Dock app bouncing thing. There are some other funky things...try macosxhints.com for more.

[Randman]

Originally posted by Cadaver:
There is a setting in the Appearance control panel (ok, preference pane) to turn off bouncing while launching an application.

That's for turning it off when the app is opening, not after it wants your attention.

[chris v]

Originally posted by Millennium:
Or, of course, you could pay attention to it. The whole point of the exercise is precisely to grab the user's attention.

Generally, the dialog box that the apps throw up in front of everything is enough to grab my attention. Maybe the thing to do (If you've got a problem that doesn't throw up a dialog) would be to add a red triangle with an exclamation point to the dock icon. That should be within the current capabilities of mose decent app programmers, right?

[TETENAL]

Originally posted by chris v:
Generally, the dialog box that the apps throw up in front of everything is enough to grab my attention.

But applications are not supposed to do that because it's impolite.

Maybe the thing to do (If you've got a problem that doesn't throw up a dialog) would be to add a red triangle with an exclamation point to the dock icon. That should be within the current capabilities of mose decent app programmers, right?

And most applications do this (Mail, instant messaging applications etc.) Though it might stay unnoticed by the user for longer times and it doesn't work at all if the Dock is hidden. So for important things the user should be notified about the Dock bouncing is available to the application.

[fisherKing]

interesting thread...

i like taking responsibility for what i open and use, sp i hate the bouncing icon when i am, for example, finishing an email.

dock detox works great, btw, thanx!

[chris v]

Originally posted by TETENAL:
But applications are not supposed to do that because it's impolite.

Tangential: There are a few things that drive me nuts with that-- Like when you go to download something in Safari, then you go back to your browsing. You can be in the middle of text entry, and the zip file, or .dmg or whatever will mount in the finder then pop to the front. The "Device not put away properly" dialog hogs the screen, too. Neither of those are exapmples of dock icon bouncing, though. Just venting.

[TETENAL]

Originally posted by chris v:
Tangential: There are a few things that drive me nuts with that-- Like when you go to download something in Safari, then you go back to your browsing. You can be in the middle of text entry, and the zip file, or .dmg or whatever will mount in the finder then pop to the front.

I don't remember Finder windows poppint to the front. You can go to the Safari preferences and uncheck the automatic opening of 'safe files' and it won't automatically mount downloaded disk images. You can do it manually by clicking the icon in the download window.

The "Device not put away properly" dialog hogs the screen, too.

Yes, but that's very gruff behavior of you. Not unmounting devices before unplugging deserves some spanking; you're lucky to just get the dialog.

[chris v]

Originally posted by TETENAL:
I don't remember Finder windows poppint to the front. You can go to the Safari preferences and uncheck the automatic opening of 'safe files' and it won't automatically mount downloaded disk images. You can do it manually by clicking the icon in the download window.Yes, but that's very gruff behavior of you. Not unmounting devices before unplugging deserves some spanking; you're lucky to just get the dialog.

I should change that pref, you're right. It would be nice if dmgs would mount without coming to the front, though.

As far as disks, that's probably a pretty important dialog, but for some reason, my G5 doesn't like to un-mount my iPod. If I hit the eject button, iTunes will beachball for a minute or two, so sometimes I get impatient, and yank it, when I know full well nothing is writing to the disk. At least you can dismiss that with a tap of the return key, unlike a bouncing dock icon.

[SSharon]

Originally posted by Thinine:
This is completely under the control of the app doing the bouncing. If it doesn't have an option to turn it off, talk to the app maker. This isn't Apple's problem.

You're right I should have been more clear. My problems are with Mail and Safari, both of which Apple writes. I don't mind an icon bouncing once, its just when it keeps going that I get annoyed. For example I have AIM set to bounce once because it has the option to do so, but when Mail can't connect to my school's mail server at 4:13am when they restart it everyday I really don't need Mail to bounce for a few hours until I wake up. Same for Safari, its just not that important to me when a site times out.

As someone else mentioned about Safari it is not cool that it brings itself to the front when disk images mount etc.

I really like the idea of having a red exclamation point in the dock icon as that is much less bothersome to me than the bouncing.

Unfortunately I don't want to use dock detox as I don't mind the occasional bounce or even a few bounces if its important. Dock animation when an app is loading also doesn't bother me so much, but I have it off on my ibook anyway.