New Utility Lets You Move The Dock

by , 7:00 AM EST, March 29th, 2001

The ability to move the Dock from the bottom center position on the OS X desktop has appeared, disappeared, and now reappeared in OS X builds leading up to last weekend's release. OS X 10.0 does allows the Dock to be moved around the screen, and command line hacks have appeared around the Web walking people through the necessary steps to do so. Austin Shoemaker, however, has made it easy for everybody. His new utility, Docking Maneuvers, allows users access to a pop-up menu for changing the orientation of the Dock without having to use the command line interface. According to Mr. Shoemaker:

Docking Maneuvers is a simple tool that empowers you to move the Dock to any edge of the screen, and anchor it in any corner. The software configures the Dock to activate this functionality, which is disabled by default in the shipping version of Mac OS X.

My software replaces the following process:

1. Enabling the root account in NetInfo Manager.
2. Opening Terminal.app and typing su, then your root password.
3. Entering a command to open the Dock package's internal property list as root in TextEdit
4. Searching the XML for a certain dictionary and changing the key of an object from "command" to "menu"
5. Saving the property list over the previous list and quitting Terminal and TextEdit.

Éwith this:

1. Open Docking Maneuvers.
2. Click the options you want.
3. Click Make Changes and type in your password.

Docking Maneuvers is available for free. You can find more information at Mr. Shoemaker's Web site.

The Mac Observer Spin:

Just like many of the "hacks" initially discovered for Public Beta that required the command line, GUI replacements were eventually available. This is one that is sure to be popular with those wanting more control over their computing experience.

Austin Shoemaker