[booboo]

I don't know if this has been discussed to death, but there's no thread of similar title on the first page - where it belongs as a stickie - so I'm posting this.

For Those That Care.

That means if you're not bothered about the functionality that has been removed - i.e. that you can no longer navigate your files via a folder in the Dock, then don't bother posting.

If you're perfectly happy with the new, virtually indistinguishable and OSX-incongruent folders, that unhelpfully change their appearance in the Dock, don't bother posting.

If you like the new Stacks - which in both Fan and Grid modes violate just about every Apple UIG going, don't bother posting. You're either a newbie still impressed with the animations, or you've bypassed the Dock (as much as possible) in your workflow. Thing is, unless you use the Terminal for everything, it can't be bypassed completely, and that is probably part of the tragedy.

Yes, I know that part of Apple's new paradigm is for users not to organize their own files, but some of us have to - for several reasons. Here are two:

1. We have lots and lots of files, some of which are used collaboratively, some of which need batch processing, and many of which are accessed in applications which require files to be in specific locations. (may audio app's, for example.) We need to know where these files are.

2. We use our spatial memories. Yes, I still find it easier to remember where a bunch of files based on the map in my head or where my files are - i.e. where I put them - rather than by remembering a particular file name, or looking at a long list of recent items and selecting via probable date. The spatial memory thing was a driving force of the whole GUI paradigm so if you're going to pooh-pooh it, you're pitting yourself against a lot of advocates and research. But even if you don't require or use it, that surely doesn't justify breaking it for those who do? Tell you what, don't bother posting.

If on the other hand, the Dock's missing navigational functionality and tampering with icon appearance has seriously slowed down your workflow, then please lend your support.

Given that petitions seldom produce results, do we just sit and wait for the 3rd party hacks?


P.S. So what are the two apparently identical paper-blue folders each with an identical subtly embossed 'A' in my Dock? Neither of them are the godawful mess of a homage to the Address book that is my Applications folder. So your starter for 10. A prize will be given to the first person identifying BOTH folders. Honest.

[MacosNerd]

I like the new dock, especially stacks. I keep my files fairly organized and stacks really helps in that manner.

While others bemoan the dock's metamorphosis, I think most of the changes enhance my productivity and looks good doing so

The only criticism is the little light at the bottom to signify what is active. I think something with more contrast would work better.

[Big Mac]

We really don't need yet another thread on this topic.

[cybergoober]

Originally Posted by booboo 

P.S. So what are the two apparently identical paper-blue folders each with an identical subtly embossed 'A' in my Dock? Neither of them are the godawful mess of a homage to the Address book that is my Applications folder. So your starter for 10. A prize will be given to the first person identifying BOTH folders. Honest.

I'll guess one of them is your Hard Drive.

[::maroma::]

Originally Posted by booboo 

Given that petitions seldom produce results, do we just sit and wait for the 3rd party hacks?

Seldom? When has any online petition worked?

[::maroma::]

Originally Posted by booboo 

P.S. So what are the two apparently identical paper-blue folders each with an identical subtly embossed 'A' in my Dock? Neither of them are the godawful mess of a homage to the Address book that is my Applications folder. So your starter for 10. A prize will be given to the first person identifying BOTH folders. Honest.

That's not an "A" its the Applications icon. Looks like you got 2 Applications folders in your dock.

[Person Man]

Originally Posted by booboo 

Given that petitions seldom produce results, do we just sit and wait for the 3rd party hacks?

Just wait for the 3rd party hacks. It won't take long. Some alternative suggestions have been made already, including replacing Leopard's dock with Tiger's (albeit at the loss of new features of Dashboard, Spaces, and Time Machine recovery).

[MartiNZ]

For the moment I've taken up the challenge to like stacks. My stacks double as useful Finder sidebar links, wherein they actually are properly spring-loaded, except for my stack of folders on a network, which won't permit spring-loading until they've been explicitly opened ><.

[Cybersparrow]

Well, I'm not allowed to post on this thread as per your directions, but I will anyway because I think that disparaging those who like the new Dock (by calling us "newbie[s] who are still impressed with the animations") is slightly over the line. By the way, every time I click on the new Dock, I hope you feel a slight disturbance in the Force.

[booboo]

Originally Posted by ::maroma:: 

That's not an "A" its the Applications icon. Looks like you got 2 Applications folders in your dock.

No. The icon that looks mostly like the Address book is the Applications folder - I already gave you that hint.

Neither of two 'A's are my Applications folder - that's partly my complaint.

[booboo]

Originally Posted by cybergoober 

I'll guess one of them is your Hard Drive.

You'll need to do better than that.

[booboo]

Originally Posted by Person Man 

Just wait for the 3rd party hacks. It won't take long. Some alternative suggestions have been made already, including replacing Leopard's dock with Tiger's (albeit at the loss of new features of Dashboard, Spaces, and Time Machine recovery).

Oh really? Can you point me to a thread?

Stacks may make noobs go 'ooh' but they're far less functional than hierarchical menus. I want 'em back!

[Big Mac]

http://forums.macnn.com/90/mac-os-x/...acks+usability

[::maroma::]

Originally Posted by booboo 

No. The icon that looks mostly like the Address book is the Applications folder - I already gave you that hint.

Neither of two 'A's are my Applications folder - that's partly my complaint.

Geez, what a mess. Was there not one single person at Apple who understood the value of an icon to represent a folder? Seriously, they might as well have made Stacks icons randomly change every few seconds to any icon on your system.

[cybergoober]

Originally Posted by booboo 

You'll need to do better than that.

Better than what? I'm suggesting that one of the stacks was created by dragging your HD icon to the Dock, not that you made the icon for your HD the Applications folder icon. Whatever.

BTW - I'm not a n00b and I like the new Dock.

[P]

One A is the HD root and one is your home directory. Neither of which makes sense to have as a shortcut, as they're found in the Go menu in the Finder.

Yes, the icons for Piles need some work - some way to see more than just the first icon, perhaps by making the icons smaller and moving them slightly wrt each other - but the concept as such isn't bad. Of course, I'd forgive a lot now that they finally made them springloaded, but in general I like it. It's a way to have real menus in the Dock. If you want to have shortcuts to folders, put them on the Desktop.

[osiris]

I'm a war-torn veteran of numerous Apple OS upgrades and updates, and I hate the new dock and stacks.

[besson3c]

Everytime there is a thread like this there are these emotional "I like the new Dock" comments that often grow in frequency and never really go beyond this statement to get to an actual analysis of the usability implications of these changes.

Let's think about this...

It is clear to me that there are circumstances where it is possible for there to be indistinguishable icons lined up in the Dock. This doesn't affect everybody all the time, but it is a big gaping hole in its general design. Apple has positioned the Dock as being a requirement to run OS X since you cannot kill it, so since Apple wants to dock to be everything for everybody, it needs to be everything for everybody. The original poster's complaints are completely valid, I hope they aren't drowned out.

A solution? Perhaps Apple should allow for some sort of crest, automatic color change, the labels staying active, or SOMETHING. In general, having several indistinguishable objects is a very bad idea in terms of usability. You could argue that the users put these folders in the Dock, so that is their responsibility/blame, but when these folders start automatically changing in appearance without the user's consent or control, this becomes Apple's problem.

[besson3c]

Second, in general it is also a bad idea to remove features. Apple removed the ability for the stacks to show a hierarchy. Users that were setup to rely on their hierarchies and unknowingly upgrade to Leopard have a right to be displeased, just like iMovie users were displeased across their last upgrade.

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by P 

t's a way to have real menus in the Dock.

We HAD real menus for Dock folders before, and they were far more functional than Stacks. Perhaps you never knew about them.

[MacosNerd]

Originally Posted by booboo 

Stacks may make noobs go 'ooh' but they're far less functional than hierarchical menus. I want 'em back!

Long time mac user here - Mac SE days and I like the new dock. Making disparaging generalizations like this add nothing to the debate.

[achaete-scute]

I rarely post, but I do agree so much with the OP and others above; for me, the new dock is counterproductive because of the inability to have hierarchical folders. Also, as pointed out before, the fact that a folder icon changes without the user's explicit action (just 'cause the content of that folder changed) makes the icon - which should be a metaphor, a stable visual representation of its content - totally useless and actually counterproductive. I've been using Macs for more than 15 years, and this is the only time I remember when Apple made its user interface so significantly less userfriendly.

[Kevin]

Apple doesn't need to stop adding features like stacks and such. They just need to stop taking features away while adding others.

I LOVE stacks for things. And I like the old way for others.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by MacosNerd 

Long time mac user here - Mac SE days and I like the new dock. Making disparaging generalizations like this add nothing to the debate.

Nor does not elaborating on why you like the new dock and how the shortcomings and tradeoffs that people are arguing are invalid.

[shinji]

I only use it for my downloads folder, and it gets to be a pain in the ass because I have so much crap in there I always have to click 'more in finder' anyway.

[MacosNerd]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Nor does not elaborating on why you like the new dock and how the shortcomings and tradeoffs that people are arguing are invalid.

just scroll up and see my first post

I like the new dock, especially stacks. I keep my files fairly organized and stacks really helps in that manner.

[cybergoober]

besson: Why does it matter why I like the Dock? It's not like I'm saying, "I like the new Dock so you must somehow be wrong." Nor am I questioning the validity of the argument that many people preferred the old functionality of the Dock. I just like it. Sorry.

Truth be told, I hardly use the Dock. I keep nothing in my Dock (well, I have the Downloads and another stack in there now). I use Quicksilver for my app launching.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by MacosNerd 

just scroll up and see my first post

Your statement is still very vague and does not delve into the meat of this issue...

Have you ever posted about say, a program upgrading to something, only to receive posts in response along the likes of "the upgrade went okay for me". Well, that's great and all, but a pretty lightweight answer that is not terribly helpful - it is fairly obvious in my hypothetical example that some people are able to upgrade, just as it is obvious that some people like the Dock.

All I'm trying to do is elevate this discussion from a debate about whether or not we like the dock to a more in-depth critique of it.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by cybergoober 

besson: Why does it matter why I like the Dock? It's not like I'm saying, "I like the new Dock so you must somehow be wrong." Nor am I questioning the validity of the argument that many people preferred the old functionality of the Dock. I just like it. Sorry.

Truth be told, I hardly use the Dock. I keep nothing in my Dock (well, I have the Downloads and another stack in there now). I use Quicksilver for my app launching.

The original poster made some very specific critiques of the Dock, I'm just encouraging people to respond in kind rather than transforming this thread into a poll pertaining to who likes the new Dock. I enjoy a good usability discussion, and this thread has the makings of being one.

[MacosNerd]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Your statement is still very vague and does not delve into the meat of this issue...

Sure it does, I gave specific reasons why I like dock, just because you disagree with the answer doesn't mean I didn't provide specifics.

All I'm trying to do is elevate this discussion from a debate about whether or not we like the dock to a more in-depth critique of it.

And this is coming from the person who kept posting threads about his stool sample

Your track record of "elevating discussions" is laughable.

[MartiNZ]

Originally Posted by P 

One A is the HD root and one is your home directory. Neither of which makes sense to have as a shortcut, as they're found in the Go menu in the Finder.

To me the great thing about the hierarchical dock menus was that you didn't have to be in Finder to find stuff! It is nice having a lot of folders you want to access in the same part of the screen also. For instance clicking the Finder dock icon will open a hard drive window for me, but I have the hard drive accessible through a stack so it's in the same place as all my other shortcuts.

Stacks do put the focus for the file system back on Finder somewhat though, which is an interesting thing to have to say.

[besson3c]

[QUOTE=MacosNerd;3528672]Sure it does, I gave specific reasons why I like dock, just because you disagree with the answer doesn't mean I didn't provide specifics. /QUOTE]

MacosNerd, there is nothing that is more boring to me than whether or not you like the Dock, but I might be interested in your usability critique of it though.

[booboo]

The more I use the new Dock, the more I despise Stacks.

On the plus side, Fan's animations seem to impress.

On the downside, Fan is merely a crippled version of the old hierarchical menu. Crippled because you only get to browse some of the first level of file hierarchy. In every way it is inferior to what we had before. All Fan adds is the ability to sort. Sort is always good, but in this case is mandatory because Fan can only display a few files, without some contextual sorting, Fan would be utterly useless.

'Grid' is utterly pointless. depending entirely upon icon recognition, but hampers even that by random spatial rearrangement. Functionally Grid is far worse than OS9's pop-up windows, lacking any user control over spatial arrangement. But then the animation is smooth and that's what noobs and Windows converts seem impressed by.

So, correct me if I'm wrong, but all that Stacks add is animation and sorting, and what they take away is much more fundamental.

One piece of eye-candy that was not entirely useless but has apparently also disappeared in Leopard is the ability for movies to play when minimized in the Dock. Strange.

Still no takers for my two blue 'A' folders?

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

The original poster made some very specific critiques of the Dock, I'm just encouraging people to respond in kind rather than transforming this thread into a poll pertaining to who likes the new Dock. I enjoy a good usability discussion, and this thread has the makings of being one.

Let the thread be what it is. It needs no ruler.

[::maroma::]

I understand the appeal of a good thread, but whats really the point of having a good usability discussion about the Dock when anything discussed here won't make a damn difference in anything? Apple isn't reading this thread. We are all just essentially venting here. No real purpose. We can all argue amongst ourselves until we turn blue, but any resolutions we may come to are moot. They will have zero effect on what Apple does.

So what's so important about keeping this thread strictly about usability while keeping pure opinion out of it?

[besson3c]

You guys are welcome to do whatever, I'll back off... I was just trying to stay true to what seemed like the original intent of the original poster, but I also have to admit my own bias here - I'm sick of threads where people just go back and forth about what they like and don't like without deconstructing things.

However, like I said, have at it, I'll back off.

[MacosNerd]

Never mind, not worth it.

[analogue SPRINKLES]

booboo so your attitude is anyone who likes the dock is a complete idiot and "don't bother posting" right?

[P]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

We HAD real menus for Dock folders before, and they were far more functional than Stacks. Perhaps you never knew about them.

I know of them. I used them a lot at a point. They were slow as hell and you couldn't drop things on them, so they were hardly full featured. They were hierarchical, I'll give you that, but that's about the only useful thing that was lost.

[P]

Originally Posted by booboo 

Still no takers for my two blue 'A' folders?

Was my guess (one of the root and one of your home directory) wrong?

[P]

Originally Posted by MartiNZ 

Stacks do put the focus for the file system back on Finder somewhat though, which is an interesting thing to have to say.

This is what I think the focus is. With Exposé - especially the Show Desktop feature - spaces, and the Finder Go menu, the Finder can handle its own shortcuts. It no longer needs the Dock to do that for it. I like to use exactly one program for file management. Since I can't use the Dock for everything the Finder does, that program is the Finder. I also avoid using the Open/Save dialog boxes as much as possible - opening by dragging onto an app (which is why I HATE the fact that I can't do that with apps in Tiger's Dock folders) and saving everything to the Desktop and then organizing.

I don't have anything against hierarchical menus - I'm all for returning them to the right-click of the folders in the Dock or icons in the fan - but the total Leopard Dock work better for me than the Tiger one, because of it's other improvements.

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by P 

I know of them. I used them a lot at a point. They were slow as hell and you couldn't drop things on them, so they were hardly full featured. They were hierarchical, I'll give you that, but that's about the only useful thing that was lost.

They weren't slow on my 1.25 mhz G4. And they worked a lot like the Apple menu.

[::maroma::]

Originally Posted by booboo 

Still no takers for my two blue 'A' folders?

Just tell us already, jeez.

[besson3c]

A for apricot?

[robban]

The first A is the disk of your computer assuming you have English language where Applications is the first folder. The second one is a sharepoint from your Powerbook or your backup disk from 10.4. Oh, and it's mounted as it would be a blue disk icon otherwise.

I guess it's said before: OS9 was designed by behaviourists but Steve dropped them in favor for designers for OSX. The GUI is getting more beautiful but less useful as they get more influence. I guess Steve want to make a good demo instead of a good OS for the user.

[Kevin]

robban I wouldn't even call it beautiful. 2-3 different GUI ideas all in one window...

[robban]

Haha, I guess it's different design teams on separate floors but that's pure speculation.
As mac users sing along and expect to get some fancy animation to show their friends we'll continue to see that. The user friendly OS went as Apple lost the "left (dangerous) vs right (safe)" thinking - it's sometimes one and sometimes the other, almost as bad as Windos.

[besson3c]

A for acorn?

[Kevin]

BTW One folder is his HOME folder showing the application's folder as the top stack. The other folder could be his applications folder?

Apple needed to think this through a bit better.

Hopefully by 10.5.5.

And it wont be something we will have to PAY for. 10.5 is almost like 10.0 was. A beta test the users payed for.

[moonmonkey]

This looks lovely.



XD