[grbear]

Hiding the dock is a necessity on the 24" iMac's that suffer from LCD burn-in (or whatever fancy term Apple wishes to use).

[daphne747]

rameeti, on 29 January 2010 - 07:25 AM, said:

Hide the Dock? No. No. and No.
As any every Human Interface expert has already stated, aiming for a target that you can not see is not efficient. You have to be able to see your target to hit it. The user thinks they know approximately where the icon will appear but it is a constantly moving target as the position changes based on what documents are currently open.

What does need to be altered with regard to the dock is the position of the dock. Every user has a screen that is wider than it is tall. Yet we live in a world where documents are taller than they are wide. Why is it then that the designers of the Dock chose to take away some of the height of the screen when that is most precious? The dock belongs on the right side of the screen. There it will not impinge on the restricted height of the screen and it can be left visible at all times so that the user can see the target icon that they are desiring to use without the delay of the dock to appear.

Unless, of course, your an idiot like me with a bazillion apps. In that case, I could probably use two screens to display all of the applications that I move between at any given time. @ 1600 x 1200, the apps I use most often don't even fit at the bottom of the screen. Thank god for genie!

[Martian]

Pardon me if this was already mentioned:

       The Dock toggles between Auto-hide and Always-show with a simple, quck "Command Option D". You really don't have to permanently choose between the two prefs.

[wardoggie]

bastion, on 29 January 2010 - 07:46 AM, said:

rameeti, on 29 January 2010 - 07:25 AM, said:

Why is it then that the designers of the Dock chose to take away some of the height of the screen when that is most precious? The dock belongs on the right side of the screen.

You do realize that one of the options you can set for the dock is to have it appear on either side, right?

This post and the comment about relying on a blinking colon to alert the user to system crashes lead me to believe the original poster is not familiar with macs. I've not had a system crash in a long time... Knock on wood! Application crashes, yes, but system crashes? No. Personally, I keep Activity Monitor running all the time so I know when I've got an unresponsive app.

I also keep my dock on the bottom and visible all the time because screen real estate is not so precious that I can't afford to keep it open. And I prefer to keep my application folder in my dock, so I can open less-frequently used apps that way.

As for the blinking colon/visible seconds idea... sorry, my ADD would not allow me to get any work done if stuff was constantly blinking or changing in my peripheral vision. As is, I usually glance at the clock every day at 10:00 because everything to the left of the clock slides to the left when it goes from three digits (9:59) to four. Going from 12:59 to 1:00 doesn't bother me as much though. No idea why

But that's the great thing about modern UIs; you can customize them to the point where no one else can use your system! LOL

[John_Sawyer]

I have a solution for all the arguments for and against various settings: Apple should retain all of OS X's customization options, but all users should adopt only the ones I've chosen for myself. Everything solved.

[randall]

"Disable Caps Lock" Why when you can right click and go to "Transformations" > "Convert to Lower/Capitalise/Uppercase" ?!?

[Norton]

rameeti, on 29 January 2010 - 07:31 AM, said:

system hangs or crashes.

What's that?

[hillstones]

flybynight, on 29 January 2010 - 07:43 AM, said:

I don't see why you would turn off Applications from Spotlight. I use Spotlight as a launcher probably as often as I use it for searching. Especially for items inside System Prefs. For instance Cmd-space "Print" gets me to the Print & Fax prefs pane quicker than mousing to the dock or Apple menu, then clicking the right pane.

Why do you need to look for Applications when they are in your Applications folder? Why use Spotlight as a launcher when you can put most used Apps in the Dock for easy access?

[cycomachead]

You missed my favorite system preference!! The ability to turn on tab-control for all OS elements and not just text boxes. So incredibly useful if you use the keyboard.

Anyway, I like my dock at the bottom, hidden. It's efficient for screen space, and the way I use my mac, more efficient than the left. But, for launching apps I use launch bar, and the keyboard most of the time I'm actually doing work.

[hillstones]

wardoggie, on 29 January 2010 - 01:27 PM, said:

This post and the comment about relying on a blinking colon to alert the user to system crashes lead me to believe the original poster is not familiar with macs. I've not had a system crash in a long time... Knock on wood! Application crashes, yes, but system crashes? No. Personally, I keep Activity Monitor running all the time so I know when I've got an unresponsive app.

The tip about having the time separator flash is by someone VERY familiar with Macs, probably more familiar than yourself. System crashes were very common in the Classic Mac OS and one way to determine if the Finder froze is by having the time separators flash. If they stopped flashing, you knew the Finder crashed on you. Even in Mac OS X, the Finder can crash and become unresponsive. If you use Mobile Me and iDisk, there are times when the iDisk access can be acting up and cause the Finder to become unresponsive. Two ways to determine this, check to see if the time separators are still flashing, or option-right-click on Finder icon in the Dock to see if it says Finder Not Responding. Thankfully a relaunch of the Finder will bring it back to life without a full restart.

[g4zilla]

Quote

I actually have had some hangs, and I have my colon set to flash.

You must be very popular at parties.

[TheWildJacko]

While we're talking efficiency, why go into System Preferences to hide or show the dock? That's two extra steps. The keyboard shortcut is Command-option-D.

[flunkycarter]

rameeti, on 29 January 2010 - 07:25 AM, said:

Hide the Dock? No. No. and No.
As any every Human Interface expert has already stated, aiming for a target that you can not see is not efficient. You have to be able to see your target to hit it. The user thinks they know approximately where the icon will appear but it is a constantly moving target as the position changes based on what documents are currently open.

What does need to be altered with regard to the dock is the position of the dock. Every user has a screen that is wider than it is tall. Yet we live in a world where documents are taller than they are wide. Why is it then that the designers of the Dock chose to take away some of the height of the screen when that is most precious? The dock belongs on the right side of the screen. There it will not impinge on the restricted height of the screen and it can be left visible at all times so that the user can see the target icon that they are desiring to use without the delay of the dock to appear.

The dock belongs where you want it to belong. My gripes with having the dock on the right side or left sides is that the icons become to small when there are a lot of items in them. On the bottom you have more real estate. Also when you maximize a window full screen, when the dock is on the right or left sides, the dock has a habit of covering toolbars and such (Like Photoshop).

[flunkycarter]

j1h15233, on 29 January 2010 - 09:01 AM, said:

The guy with the dock rant needs to chill out a bit I believe. I've had my dock hidden since the day I bought my Mac and I never struggle to find the icon I'm looking for when I bring the dock up.

Yeah that guy is a total douche bag, detestable human waste