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View Full Version : Dock Placement


tyen
Feb 13, 2000, 03:19 PM
I haven't been following everything that closely, so I don't know if this has been covered...

but I think it'd be useful if the user could move the dock to a different edge of the screen (other than the bottom).

NeXT/OpenStep had the dock on the right (direction, not correctness) side of the screen for a reason: most documents people work with are taller than they are wide, and the screens people use are wider than they are tall. So putting interfaces on the sides of documents doesn't affect the amount of a document you can see as much as if you place interface items above and below windows.

And since these are icons (and the icons look pretty big from what I've seen - yes I realise they're scalable, but how small a icon do you want for a dock?) the problem is a lot more apparent than when you put a menubar above, or a taskbar below. (nb, even windows lets you drag the taskbar to other sides of the screen)

Perhaps on larger monitors it's not such a big deal. But I still find myself using all the vertical space i can get on 17" monitors.

But perhaps it's already possible to move the dock around and i'm worrying about nothing. I hope so http://forums.macnn.com/cgi-bin/smile.gif

thwak
Feb 13, 2000, 04:11 PM
everything i've seen on this issue leads me to believe that no one really knows.

i personally am not a big fan of stuff running up the side of the screen, and it would bug the stuffing outta me if it was http://forums.macnn.com/cgi-bin/smile.gifthere and couldn't be moved, so i undrestand wanting to be able to put it there

this is a hot issue over at the appleinsider message boards, and no one seems to know for sure what's going on with the dock

i am so pumped about this os tho, i can almost not wait to use it http://forums.macnn.com/cgi-bin/smile.gif

Keda
Feb 14, 2000, 10:42 AM
I can not comment on the placement of the dock, other than to agree that a choice would be good. But functionally, it is very interesting.

Although the dock contains images, they are not icons. We have seen the demos, where the 'docked' movie contintues to play. This is a very cool feature, they are mini windows.

Instead of just making a small graphic of the app that you where using, the dock makes the actrive window very small an keeps on running the app. For those who are nervous about the control stip vanashing, this is for you. If you look at the preferances app in NeXT, it keeps running as a clock when it is docked. It should be possible in OSX to make apps that mainly opperate in the small window of the dock.