Will Leopard’s Dock be easier to read?
Leopard is full of delightful refinements to the user experience. Even Dock item names reveal considerable polish.
Tiger’s Dock
Leopard’s Dock
1. Names are displayed against a semi-transparent cartouche, similar to how Finder already displays selected items on the Desktop, and to the Command-Tab “Switch Application” overlay. As you can see in the Zen Garden example, the names are much more legible against detailed backgrounds.
2. A small arrow points from the item’s name to the item’s icon to establish a visual connection between the two—a surprisingly effective touch.
3. The name and icon are separated by more space, moving the name away from the rigid line of the Dock’s edge, to let the text breathe.
Though these images follow Apple’s published Leopard screenshots closely to illustrate changes to the way item names are displayed in the Dock, they are Photoshop simulations, of course. They don’t even include the reflective Leopard surface and 3D perspective!
Having seen the demo and looked at a lot of screenshots, I really do think that the new Dock will be much more intuitive. Combined with stacks I am not sure there is much more anyone could want in fact!
A nice feature that Apple should add to the dock is this: Double-clicking on an open app brings that app to the front AND hides all other apps. (Don’t know if Apple put this in Leopard’s dock. I’ve emailed them with this suggestion several times…)
Mark
Mark, option-clicking on an application in the Dock works as you describe: it brings that app to the front and hides all other apps.
Not quite true, actually option clicking just hides the app you were in. eg you have Safari, Mail and Terminal open and unhidden, you are in Safari, and you option click Terminal: Safari hides, Terminal comes to the front, and Mail stays as it was.
What DOES do the trick is Command-Option-Click… try it, it’s neat!
You’re right!
Stacks in a fan or grid looks like a good feature. And I hope they keep the Shift-click to minimize into the Dock. That’s a handy reference to see where the window goes.
I would like to see dragging items to the finder icon in the dock, which then opens a finder window. Only really useful for dragging desktop items but useful none the less.