Leopard: The Return of the Usable Dock
TMO Quick Tip - Leopard: The Return of the Usable Dock
by , 8:45 AM EST, February 15th, 2008
Apple giveth, and Apple taketh away... and sometimes Apple giveth back again. In this case, Apple took away some Dock functionality when it replaced pop-up menus with Stacks. Mac OS X 10.5.2 brings Tiger-style functionality back to the Dock, and it's super easy to enable.
![]() Take your Dock folder view from this... |
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Here's how:
- Click and hold on the Dock folder icon that you want to change from Leopard's Stacks-style Grid or Fan to Tiger's List-style view.
- Choose List from the pop-up menu.
![]() List brings back Tiger-style pop-up menus. |
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![]() ...to this. |
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I prefer using the List view for the folders in my Dock because accessing sub-folders and files is much easier since each parent item includes a fly-out menu to show everything it contains. That's a real time saver for me.
Jeff Gamet is TMO's Morning Editor and Reviews Editor. He lectures, teaches and speaks on Mac OS X and design-related topics, and is the author of The Designer's Guide to Mac OS X from Peachpit Press.
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Observer Comments
... but I could swear that list view is MUCH faster now than it ever was in Tiger. Usually I'm immune to the placebo "everything's snappy after an update" effect, but I couldn't help being struck by how my apps folder list -- with 200 or so items -- snapped open instantly and scrolled with no hesitation.
As long as they don't take away the improvements just to satisfy the bloggers, I'm okay with it. I personally like the grid, and I'd have been upset if we went back to the old days. Navigating a tree structure with lists is horrible. One slip of the mouse and you're back to square one.
QuoteUpQuark wrote:
and you don't have to click and HOLD like you did in Tiger. Just click once, release, point to the next folder, click.. all the way down. Improvement on Tiger and it is faster!
You never had to click and hold. Control-clicking (or right-clicking) would bring up the menu immediately, just like everywhere else. One advantage of the Tiger way was that it was much easier to actually open the folder. Clicking opened the folder, control-clicking/right-clicking opened the menu. Now clicking opens the menu and control clicking opens the preferences menu.
It's not a big deal, though. Overall I think Leopard is now better. The fact that you can set the view mode on a per-folder basis is excellent. I have several folders in my Dock, and the different modes are best for different items.
One more thing I wish they'd change is make grid view's icon arrangement mirror the folder's actual icon arrangement, instead of always being sorted. With folders where items come and go a lot, having it constantly re-sort is a hassle, because it forces you to search for commonly-used items every time you need them, instead of knowing exactly where they'll be from habit.
If Apple implemented that change, we'd finally have a real replacement for the pop-up folders of OS 8/9.
What to me is still wrong is that you cannot drag a file to the stack in the dock and have the menu pop up so that you can navigate to the intended drop folder or app. Instead, for me, pop-up folders takes over and after navigating, the final window remains open instead of all collapsing back. Perhaps someone knows a setting to change this behavior.
I hate to tell you, but I am still using Tiger and it works exactly the same way as this much needed improvement in Leopard does. You click once, and the menu window will stay open. There is no holding down needed.
PS:
Oops, I didn't see that somebody already pointed this out.
QuoteUpQuark wrote:
and you don't have to click and HOLD like you did in Tiger. Just click once, release, point to the next folder, click.. all the way down. Improvement on Tiger and it is faster!
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