[Nergol]

Hi all;

Well, I just managed to, while grabbing for something else on my desktop, accidentally drag the Downloads icon off of my dock, after which it disappeared from the Dock in a puff of smoke.

How do I bring it back? Thanks.

[Big Mac]

It's in your user's home folder. Find it and drag it back on to the Dock.

[Nergol]

Epic Win for Big Mac.

[ibook_steve]

You have no idea how many times my mother-in-law emails me about this exact same problem. It is a true failing of the dock that people 8 years into the life of OS X still don't get that icons in the dock are just aliases and that the puff of smoke when removing one does not delete the item.

Steve

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by ibook_steve 

It is a true failing of the dock that people 8 years into the life of OS X still don't get that icons in the dock are just aliases and that the puff of smoke when removing one does not delete the item.

How is it the dock's fault ?

I'd say the people FAIL.

-t

[ibook_steve]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

How is it the dock's fault ?

I'd say the people FAIL.

-t

It's simply not intuitive. Perhaps there should be a "Lock Dock" command like the "Lock Taskbar" command in Windows. The command would let you add items by dragging and dropping, but to remove them, you'd have to access a dialog box or have a warning appear when you try to drag something off the dock with a checkbox ("Do not show this warning again").

Steve

[naphtali]

Originally Posted by ibook_steve 

It's simply not intuitive. Perhaps there should be a "Lock Dock" command like the "Lock Taskbar" command in Windows. The command would let you add items by dragging and dropping, but to remove them, you'd have to access a dialog box or have a warning appear when you try to drag something off the dock with a checkbox ("Do not show this warning again").

Steve

You are trying to remove the folder Downloads from the dock. Confirm/Deny
You are trying to click Confirm. Confirm/Deny
You are getting A Little Annoyed. Confirm/Deny
Dock explodes

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by ibook_steve 

Perhaps there should be a "Lock Dock" command like the "Lock Taskbar" command in Windows.

It's under Parental Controls.

[Gamoe]

The dock is not indeed, all that user friendly, and though it works "well enough" in the way that Windows as a whole works "well enough", it is by no means a superb or intuitive design and my thoughts on the dock's fundamental flaws coming from the first time I ever saw the dock, and coming from other, well-known Mac authors like John Siracusa, remain true to this day.

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by Nergol 

Epic Win for Big Mac.

Score!

[peeb]

The epic fail here is that when you remove something from a finder sidebar or the dock, there is no undo.

[jmiddel]

Not sure how the dock is not user friendly. I mean, you have to drag things from their folder to it, and they clearly also remain in the folder. You simply cannot delete anything from the dock, only the alias. Seems intuitive to me, a great way of having everything you need to access right there on the desktop. It sure saves me a lot of time and aggravation with no downside I have experienced

[peeb]

What's unintuitive about it is that when you drag something from one place to another, typically it is a copy. When you do the same from the dock, it explodes in a puff. You can't undo this, and it's not clear where it went. That it was only an alias, not the thing itself, is not intuitive, you have to know that, and there's no way you can from the interface.

[Hal Itosis]

Hmm, yeah... maybe Dock and Sidebar should work like Menu Extras and Toolbar: need ⌘-drag to remove.

[Nergol]

Yeah, I may do that "Lock Dock" thing. I once was dragging about 30 picture files somewhere and accidentally let them go over the Dock. It took a while to remove them all.

My biggest problems with the Dock are the changes to it in Leopard. The mirrored appearance is too clever by half, and made things worse, not better. And the little blue fuzzball for an active application is nearly invisible against the mirrored Dock, and a big step in the wrong direction from Tiger's clear black arrows. I wish there was a "Classic Dock" option somewhere.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by Nergol 

I wish there was a "Classic Dock" option somewhere.

There is a "Classic Dock" option. It's called

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES; killall Dock

and you copy it into Terminal. To revert to the mirrored Dock you do the same with

defaults remove com.apple.dock no-glass; killall Dock

[Nergol]

Tetenal;

So I just paste that at the terminal prompt? Simple as that?

If so, it will be an Epic Win for you as well.

[analogika]

Yeah, just paste it in the Terminal and hit return.

Originally Posted by Nergol 

And the little blue fuzzball for an active application is nearly invisible against the mirrored Dock, and a big step in the wrong direction from Tiger's clear black arrows.

I have no problem with this, and find it comfortably subtle.

It underscores that fact that it's pretty much completely irrelevant to the system or the user whether an application he's not currently interfacing with is actually running and dormant or not running at all.

[Chuckit]

Except it is relevant. If Photoshop isn't running, I'm going to be starring at an annoying splash screen for the next seven years of my life and a lot of the time I'd much rather just open my photo in Preview than wait for that to complete.

[edified]

Originally Posted by ibook_steve 

It's simply not intuitive. Perhaps there should be a "Lock Dock" command like the "Lock Taskbar" command in Windows.....

Steve

I've always thought CMD-Drag would be better for add/removing Dock icons (a-la toolbars). It would also fix the problem with dragging files onto Docked app icons.

[Gamoe]

Major Problems with the Dock:

- Disappearing puff-of-smoke icons. provides confusing, unclear feedback on what has happened to the item.

- It is centered, providing a constantly changing target when apps run, quit and are added and removed from the dock. This makes makes it impossible to select an item quickly from memory, as its position is always changing.

- Unlike other conventions, like a menu, it is finite. I tend to store a lot of items in the dock. Add a few minimized windows and the icons become very small on my MacBook's screen. The difference from my 20" external and 13" built-in display is very obvious in this particular respect.

- It combines too many functions, which is why it tends to accumulate icons. It is a repository for app aliases, as well as a process menu, a "shelf" for minimized windows, a place for folder aliases as well, and an inexplicable holder of the Trash, which was more at home on the Desktop, in my view.

- It takes up another side of the screen, in addition to the universal menu bar. The process menu of old, from the days before Mac OS X, while not necessarily the epitome of design, lived in the menu bar and took up no more space than the application's name and icon.

This has all been hashed and rehashed since the dock first came out. It's just not good design, like it or not. And Apple's new fancy dock in Leopard is even more alerting, as it seems Cupertino has continued to put visual aesthetics in front of true usability. I prefer my Dock on the side, so i don't get to see the over-fancy graphics anyway, but it's just not a good default.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by Gamoe 

I prefer my Dock on the side, so i don't get to see the over-fancy graphics anyway, but it's just not a good default.

A have it there as well. So I get to 'enjoy' the transparent version of the dock. I don't really understand Apple's design here. Whereas most of OS X has gone away from transparency, the Leopard menu bar and this dock now have transparency.

[Nergol]

Mirrored Dock is gone. Nergol is happy. Epic Win for Tetenal.

[Nergol]

P.S. I don't like transparent menu bar either. Can I turn that off too?

[OreoCookie]

Yes, it's optional since 10.5.2: launch the Sys Prefs > Desktop & Screensaver, on the bottom there is an option to enable/disable the transparent menu bar.

[Nergol]

Epic Win for OreoCookie!

[chris v]

You know what gets to me? You can't drag a folder from the finder sidebar to the dock.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by chris v 

You know what gets to me? You can't drag a folder from the finder sidebar to the dock.

I guess that's because you can't actually drag Finder sidebar items. All you can do is reorder them within the sidebar or remove them.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by chris v 

You know what gets to me? You can't drag a folder from the finder sidebar to the dock.

In fact, you can't drag a folder from the Finder sidebar to ANYWHERE.

****ing annoying, and quite disastrous from a UI standpoint (I see lots of user confusion because of this)

[Chuckit]

Yeah, that is a busted interface. The Dock UI is confusing enough, but it's just plain mean-spirited having what appear to be folders on the left side of a window that normally displays folders and then having them turn out not to be folders but instead some kind of weird folder doppelganger that vanishes when you try to drag it.

[Big Mac]

Everything you put in the Dock vanishes with a poof. Putting the actual files in the Dock would be dumb, so they need to be proxies. Same thing for the sidebar.

[peeb]

The behavior is not bad, it makes sense, it's just unintuitive to people who don't happen to know that.

[CharlesS]

You can drag actual files from the Dock if you hold down the Command key when you start the drag. Doesn't work for the Finder sidebar though.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

...but it's just plain mean-spirited having what appear to be folders on the left side of a window that normally displays folders and then having them turn out not to be folders but instead some kind of weird folder doppelganger that vanishes when you try to drag it.

That's because these folders aren't folders, they're actually the Finder's tabs.

[peeb]

Yeah, but they look like folders. To users who don't know this, it's not clear why something that has the same icon as a folder doesn't behave like a folder.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by peeb 

Yeah, but they look like folders. To users who don't know this, it's not clear why something that has the same icon as a folder doesn't behave like a folder.

Sure. That's why it's a broken GUI.

[peeb]

You know, windows actually manages this better. There is a different icon for an alias that makes it clear that you are not manipulating the real folder.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by peeb 

You know, windows actually manages this better. There is a different icon for an alias that makes it clear that you are not manipulating the real folder.

Erm…aliases on Mac OS X have a badge. But Windows doesn't have aliases (unless you're talking about shortcuts). What are you thinking of here?

[peeb]

Shortcuts - sorry. On the dock, or in finder sidebars, the fact that the thing that looks like a folder, but doesn't act like one, is not signaled.

[Chuckit]

It doesn't act like an alias either, though. What it's most similar to, I suppose, is a button — and in fact that's what dock items looked like in NeXTstep.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

Yeah, that is a busted interface. The Dock UI is confusing enough, but it's just plain mean-spirited having what appear to be folders on the left side of a window that normally displays folders and then having them turn out not to be folders but instead some kind of weird folder doppelganger that vanishes when you try to drag it.

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

Everything you put in the Dock vanishes with a poof. Putting the actual files in the Dock would be dumb, so they need to be proxies. Same thing for the sidebar.

Yep. So they implemented it in a way that violates user expectations that are based on they way everything else on the computer works. In other words, a broken interface.

This is precisely the kind of stuff that Apple is supposed to think through before implementing anything in a confusing and broken way.

It's the primary criterion that differentiates Macintosh from Windows, and it pains me (and, more directly, my clients) that they've fumbled this.

[Hal Itosis]

Originally Posted by analogika 

So they implemented it in a way that violates user expectations that are based on they way everything else on the computer works. In other words, a broken interface.

Using the same logic you present for the Sidebar, then... I suppose if we put an alias
on the desktop, and then trash it later... the original should also move to the trash?

Same for DragThing? If I 'move to trash' an item in a DragThing dock, the original
should also go there? I think not... and -- if that's broken -- then I like it broken.

Sidebar items aren't "real", they're just references. And folks need to learn that.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by Hal Itosis 

Using the same logic you present for the Sidebar, then... I suppose if we put an alias
on the desktop, and then trash it later... the original should also move to the trash?

Huh? I mean, what the hell are you arguing? Huh???

When I *explicitly* CREATE an alias in the file system, it behaves exactly the same as every other file, in every other location. If I drag it somewhere, it stays put, and if I drag it away from there, it moves to the new location.

The only EXCEPTIONS are the Finder sidebar and the Dock, where something is an alias despite the fact that I didn't MAKE one - I just dragged something there.

There is no way to implement this consistently with the rest of file system behavior.*) This means it's fundamentally broken, not just incompletely implemented.




*) actually there is, but it entails making absolutely clear the differences in approach between Dock/sidebar and expected file behavior, by removing them completely from one another: a Windows-style "configure Dock icons" MENU, and disabling drag-and-drop. Yuck.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by analogika 

*) actually there is, but it entails making absolutely clear the differences in approach between Dock/sidebar and expected file behavior, by removing them completely from one another: a Windows-style "configure Dock icons" MENU, and disabling drag-and-drop. Yuck.

That's kind of the way NSToolbar works, though. You go to "Customize Toolbar..." to edit it, although you can still use drag-and-drop by holding the Command key down when you drag things, so no functionality is lost for non-newbies.

[Simon]

Bottom line is that Dock items and Finder sidebar folders should actually be buttons rather than icons. As Chuck already mentioned, incidentally this is the way it used to be in NeXTstep.

[voodoo]

I've given up on the Dock a long time ago as the multitool Steve wants us to think it is. I only use it to switch between active apps. When there are no apps running, the Dock is empty save for the Finder icon and the Trash.

I just use the Finder to open apps, open a new Finder browser window and click Applications in the sidebar and there are all my apps.

It involves more clicking than optimal, but then again: no more Dock silliness and switching between active apps in the Dock is far easier. On one hand there are fewer apps active than I would otherwise have in an app launcer like the Dock and on the other no more accidental clicking on an app and waiting until it responds before I can quit it and select the app I wanted to originally.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by voodoo 

It involves more clicking than optimal, but then again: no more Dock silliness and switching between active apps in the Dock is far easier. On one hand there are fewer apps active than I would otherwise have in an app launcer like the Dock and on the other no more accidental clicking on an app and waiting until it responds before I can quit it and select the app I wanted to originally.

You don't have to do that. If you click on the wrong app and it starts launching, just right-click and force quit it.

[kmkkid]

Originally Posted by peeb 

You know, windows actually manages this better. There is a different icon for an alias that makes it clear that you are not manipulating the real folder.

I don't want arrows cluttering up my dock icons tyvm.

[peeb]

Neither do I. But having dock icons that are exactly the same as folder icons is a problem for users who expect things that look the same to behave the same.

[voodoo]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

You don't have to do that. If you click on the wrong app and it starts launching, just right-click and force quit it.

Appreciate the gesture Chuckit, but I know that. In most cases though, except Photoshop or something, the app is already active by the time Force Quit kicks in, because Force Quit is far from being an 'instant' thing. It sometimes doen't even work from the Dock and you'll have to press the handy key combo to get the Force Quit menu and then choose... blah blah

Point is, yes you are absoloutly correct, and no it doesn't change anything because it is just as inconvenient and certainly doesn't solve a single issue with the Dock.

But an aside question, I've been member of this nerd forum for seven years and frequent the tech discussions. What on Earth made you think I wasn't aware of Force Quitting? I also know about nifty things like 'Double-clicking' and how to eject volumes and disks by dragging them into the trash.