[MrBS]

I've found apps being dock aware is more of a hindrance than a help for me. There's being what I'll call "casually dock aware", which is fine. An app won't open a new window underneath the dock. That's fine and dandy. Not extremely helpful, but a little added polish that's nice. Then there's being "strictly dock aware". That's when an app, let's say, DVD player, freaks out if you move it under the dock. So if I'm trying to do some work and plug in a simpson's DVD and put it in a tiny size and try to slide that into the corner (my dock's bottom center) it WON'T go. Not very helpful at all.

And the one thing I really think SHOULD be dock aware isn't... the finder shouldn't place items on the desktop behind the dock. Maybe as a last resort before it stacks them up on top of each other, but if 80% of desktop is wide open don't stick the file I've downloaded behind the dock. It's not a window that you can easily move around... it's just a huge pain to have to get a file out from behind the dock.

~BS

[zachs]

There are some apps (Internet Explorer, for example) which will allow you to move windows down into the Dock's space - when the Dock is hidden. But when you un-hide the Dock, it pushes the window up. That's what I like.

I agree that it's annoying to never be able to put windows down there (DVD Player, like you said), even when the Dock is hidden.

[KP*]

I wish everything was dock-aware (especially Safari!) but it would be fine if it was an option under dock prefs or something.

[Lancer409]

dock aware doesnt bug me .. makes my life easier. i hate when i click something at the bottom of the window, only to have the dock spring up. it keeps the dock "neat looking"

as for the icons on desktop .. i hate how far they are spread out .. wastes space .. especially on a 12inch powerbook

[SS3 GokouX]

I have a row of invisible icons along the bottom of my Desktop to make sure that no other files/folders go under the Dock. It works really well with the Desktop snapped to grid. Open/Save dialogs are a little weird because the first row items are blank, but that's a small price to pay for the benefits.

[wulf]

More convenience than nuisance, for me. As with many of these things, it would be nice to see a global preference though.

(This would've made a good poll btw )

[brachiator]

Any news or hacks on making the desktop dock-aware?

I'd have thought this might be fixed in Tiger, but not apparently. I keep my dock on the right edge, so the HD and etc. always are tucked beneath the dock...

[Randman]

I just hide the dock until it's needed.

[brachiator]

It's a solution, to be sure. I like to keep my dock up (now that I have the screen real-estate on my new PB 15") though, so I can see the Mail incoming-mail icon and other doohickeys. Thanks

[KraziKid]

Originally Posted by SS3 GokouX

I have a row of invisible icons along the bottom of my Desktop to make sure that no other files/folders go under the Dock. It works really well with the Desktop snapped to grid. Open/Save dialogs are a little weird because the first row items are blank, but that's a small price to pay for the benefits.

How do you do that? In Panther, my icons never went uner the dock, but they do in Tiger, and it drives me insane.

[Apfhex]

In my experience the Finder doesn't ever put icons under the Dock. In fact, it tends to send them up somewhere else when I still have room for them before hitting the Dock.

I've encountered large windows that are already shoved to the top of the screen and have bottoms that are under the Dock, making it IMPOSSIBLE to resize the window without hiding the Dock. I don't remember what app or apps I saw this in, maybe IE5 or something...

[brachiator]

The problem arises (at least) when one has the Dock positioned on the right edge of the screen, rather than in the default position at the bottom of the screen. This position has the benefit (among others) of allowing the dock on a Powerbook to be permanently visible while occupying only horizontal screen real estate, rather than the more precious vertical space.

The Finder, however, does not appear to be "Dock-aware" -- that is, it doesn't recognize that the Dock is visible on the right edge and place the HD icon and subsequent icons placed on the Desktop far enough to the left to be clear of the Dock. Seems an easy affair to me, but maybe not?

[SS3 GokouX]

Originally Posted by KraziKid

How do you do that? In Panther, my icons never went uner the dock, but they do in Tiger, and it drives me insane.

I use Iconographer to make the invisible icons, and copy and pasted the icons onto folders named with spaces. Hide the Dock, place the icons along the bottom (I use align to grid), unhide the Dock.

I could send you the icons if you can't make them; I'm not at my machine right now but will be later tonight.

This method works fine on my G5 (with Panther, and now Tiger). My aging 400 mhz G4 running Panther seems to ignore them lately (I don't remember it doing it before), and is placing every new file at the bottom right of the desktop once the first two columns are full. Maybe different display resolutions could be a factor.

[Millennium]

[QUOTE=brachiator]The problem arises (at least) when one has the Dock positioned on the right edge of the screen, rather than in the default position at the bottom of the screen. This position has the benefit (among others) of allowing the dock on a Powerbook to be permanently visible while occupying only horizontal screen real estate, rather than the more precious vertical space.[quote]
Amen to that. I'd love to put my Dock on the right, where the old NeXT Dock was, but at the moment I've got it stuck at a more Windows-esque left because of the icon issue. The Finder doesn't seem to put icons over the Dock when it's on the left, but I suspect that this is more of a coincidence than any actual code on Apple's part. The icon padding just happens to work out right.

The Finder, however, does not appear to be "Dock-aware" -- that is, it doesn't recognize that the Dock is visible on the right edge and place the HD icon and subsequent icons placed on the Desktop far enough to the left to be clear of the Dock. Seems an easy affair to me, but maybe not?

You can sort of work around this by setting the Finder preferences to display information to the right of an icon, rather than in front of it. This isn't a perfect solution, as some of the text will still be covered, but it will push the icons far enough to the left that they'll be clear of it. As an added bonus, there seems to be some kind of quirk in the icon spacing, such that you can fit more icons on the screen this way.

[MartiNZ]

I like having apps dock aware as I always have the dock shown. I hate the fact that QuickTime is still just as unaware of it as ever, although this is probably only a noticeable issue on a 12" screen.

[Cadaver]

Microsoft apps are the worst, especially Word. I've had the window resize handle get stuck behind my dock, with no way to get to it except to manually hide the dock, resize the window, then unhide the dock. Very irritating.