The One-Click Trick to Moving the Dock
Okay, so you’re working in a program like Final Cut Pro or iMovie, which takes up every vertical inch of the screen, and when you go to adjust something near the bottom, the Dock keeps popping up.
Oh sure, you could move the Dock to where it’s anchored on the left or right side of the screen, but that just feels weird.
But what if you could move it temporarily to the left or right, and then get it back to the bottom when you close Final Cut Pro, in just one click?
Here’s how: Hold the shift key, click directly on the Dock’s divider line (on the far right side of the Dock), and drag the Dock to the left or right side of your screen. Bam! It moves over to the side.
Then, once you quit Final Cut Pro, just shift-click on that divider line and slam it back to the bottom (okay, drag it back to the bottom). A draggable Dock — is that cool or what!
Open a Web Page from the Dock
You can fill your Dock with applications, documents, folders, and stacks. In fact, you can even add bookmarks for web pages to your Dock. Let’s say you like to keep track of the latest news about Apple. If you add the Hot News site to your Dock, you can visit it whenever you’d like with a single click. Here’s how:
1. Go to the Apple Hot News page.
2. Drag the little Apple icon just to the left of the URL in the Address bar to your Dock.
Mac OS X creates a locator icon with the name of your website. To visit the site, just click the icon. Safari launches and takes you immediately to Hot News.
Want to add another? Since you like learning more about the Mac, let’s add the Find Out How page to your Dock, as well. To do so,
1. Visit Find Out How.
2. Drag the little Apple icon just to the left of the URL in the Address bar to your Dock.
Now, when you want to learn more about using your Mac, you can Find Out How right from the Dock.
Keep an Eye on Things, Live From the Dock
Do you like to know what’s going on “under the hood” of your Mac (stuff like your CPU usage, disk activity, memory usage — you know, total geek stuff)?
If you do, you can keep an eye on things right from within the dock using Mac OS X’s Activity Monitor. It’s found in the Applications folder, under Utilities.
Once you’ve found it, drag it into your dock, then click on it to launch it.
Once it’s launched, click-and-hold for a moment on its dock icon.
A menu will pop up, and you’ll see a dock icon menu item.
This is where you choose which activity you want to monitor from its live dock icon.
Choose it, and a live graph will appear in the dock that’s updated dynamically as you work.
Folders to Add to Your Dock
Adding folders to the right side of your dock can be a real timesaver, and two of the most popular folders to add to the dock are your home folder and your Applications folder.
Another thing you might consider, rather than putting your entire Applications folder on your dock, is to create a new folder and put in aliases of just the applications and system add-ons (such as the Calculator, etc.) that you really use.
Then you can access these by Control-clicking on the folder in the dock and a pop-up menu will appear that looks a lot like the Apple menu from OS 9.
Dropping Text on the Dock for Fast Results
Let’s say you’re reading an article online, and you read a sentence that you want to email to a friend. Don’t do the copy-and-paste thing. Instead, just highlight the text and drag-and-drop it right on the Mail icon in the Dock. It will open Mail and put that sentence into a new mail message. This tip also works in other Cocoa applications like TextEdit, Stickies, and Safari. For example, if you’re reading a story and want to do a Google search on something you’ve read, just highlight the text and drag-and-drop it on the Safari icon in the Dock. It will launch Safari and display the Google Search Results.
Remove an Application from the Dock
If you’d like to reduce the number of applications from the Dock, you can do so at any time. Simply grab the icon of the document, folder, or application you’d like to remove, and drag it out of the Dock. Release the mouse button, and the item will vanish in a puff of virtual smoke.
Add an Application to the Dock
If you enjoy the convenience of the Dock, you can make it even more useful by adding items to it you use regularly. Here, for example, you’ll find two ways to add one or more applications to your Dock.
Let’s say you’re currently using Keynote ’08, your favorite presentation software, and would like to keep it in the Dock at all times. Right-click on its icon in the Dock, and select Keep in Dock from the contextual menu that appears.
Or try this option. Open the Applications folder, grab Text Edit, and drag it to the Dock. Next time you want to use Text Edit, just click its icon in the Dock.
You can use this method to add multiple applications just as easily. In that open Applications folder, choose Calculator and Dictionary, two handy utilities, and drag both into the Dock.
Change the Position of the Dock
Mac OS X lets you customize the Dock in a number of ways.
If you choose Dock from the Apple menu and select Dock Preferences, a dialog will open giving you access to all of the Dock customization options.
Use them to:
– change the size of the Dock
– turn Magnification On (or Off) by clicking the check box and, if On, the degree of Magnification
– indicate where you’d like the Dock to appear
– select the effect (Genie or Scale) used to minimize a window
– check the Animate box, which makes the icon for an application bounce when you open it
– check the box to have Mac OS X hide the Dock when it’s not being used
Changing the Dock Syle
Before we start, you’re going to need to design your dock style.
Now I have no tutorial made on how to do this, but this is my favorite website for dock images:
http://leoparddocks.com/
From here you can download the images you need to replace the images on your dock!
Lets Begin!
You want to go to your Mac’s HD, mine is called Tom HD.
In there you will find a folder called System that looks like this:
Once inside you’ll find a folder on its own called Library, open up the folder.
Now you will need to find a folder called “Core Services” which looks like this:
Now, look for Dock !
Once you have found it, CMD + Click it and select:
Show Package Contents – > Contents – > Resources.
You are looking for these files:
scurve-l.png – scurve-m.png – scurve-sm.png – scurve-xl.png
Select these files and make sure YOU HAVE BACKED THEM UP!
Also, in some cases you may need to back up seperator.png too.
To be on the safe side, I back it up anyway!
You’re nearly there now!
Go ahead and open the ZIP file you have downloaded from Leopard Docks (http://leoparddocks.com/), notice you have: scurve-l.png – scurve-m.png – scurve-sm.png – scurve-xl.png
You need to select those files (And sometimes, if it comes with it, the seperator.png too!)
Once you have them selected, go ahead and drag them into the Resources folder and overwrite the existing scurve PNG Files!
You’re done!
All you need to do, is restart the dock. to do this, open up Terminal
(CMD + Space – > Type Terminal – > Press Enter)
Once you’re in terminal, type:
killall Dock
Once the dock has reloaded, you should have a sweet new dock !
Mac101 