Ew, you wascally Dock!
Have you ever meant to click and drag in an application (like Photoshop) but accidentally clicked and dragged in the Dock instead, only to see the Poof! cloud as the clicked Dock item was deleted? It’s not your fault—the Dock’s partial transparency is attractive but confuses the eye, and the Dock’s attractively simple drag-to-delete makes it too easy to delete items.
Have you ever somehow resized a window, perhaps to full-height, only to find the window grow box now lies beneath the Dock at the bottom of your screen? Also not your fault—the Dock floats above working real screen estate confusingly, made worse by the Dock’s changing size.
How about trying to drag a folder into the Dock but it won’t work? You try again, but no. Then you remember, oh yeah, and you drag it to the right side of the separator and it works. You know what? Not your fault—the Dock doesn’t present enough visual distinction between the Application section where the system places its icons, and the User section where you place your icons.
And when you want to drag something to the Trash, but can’t find the Trash? Of course, it’s on the far end of the Dock. You knew that, but still, it seemed just hard enough to find that you’re now distracted from what you were doing before. Not your fault—the Trash moves around and changes size as the Dock grows and shrinks, preventing you from acquiring any motor-memory relating to the action of placing something in the Trash. And because you have to think, you’re distracted from your work.
These are some of the reasons I have my dock placed on the right side of my rightmost screen and pinned to the lower right corner. Now the trash is always in the same place (lower right corner) just like it was in the classic Mac OS.
This arrangement also minimized the other annoyances because the screen is wider than tall (portrait monitor excepted). With the dock resized to less than half its default size, this takes a minimal strip off the side and not the bottom. So now you can use the full height of the screen for resizing those documents.
And with a properly working application, the resize box of a document won’t let you move it behind the dock.
Weatherman, even with a properly working application it is still possible to get a window’s grow box behind the Dock: hide the Dock, grow the window, show the Dock.
I hide the dock as best as Apple allows, but it unexpectedly pops out and intercepts clicks (thus launching unwanted apps) when I need to select items located near the edge of the screen.
This problem could be avoided if showing the hidden dock required a deliberate gesture such as “banging” the curser to the edge of the screen with moderate velocity, or clicking the mouse when the cursor is pinned at the screen edge.
As it is, I must move very gingerly whenever I need to select something near the screen edge. Ugh!
Apple, get a clue!
These problems are all (well…maybe not the forgetting that folders go to the “right” side of the dock issue) minimized by
1. never using the “hide dock” feature–it’s an annoying pause, far too often as far as I’m concerned, and it destroys motor memory and consistency
2. never using the magnification feature–it makes everything move on your Dock, which should never happen. It’s eye candy for the first day you have OS X, but this far along, nobody should use that stupid feature.
And I agree with Weatherman, the Dock is best placed on the right side of the screen (the rightmost screen if you have multiple screens) and pinned to the lower right corner. It makes life much easier.
Trevor
I really only partially identify with one of those problems, and that’s the one with the Dock covering the bottom of a window. But it only really bugs me when I’m working in a full screen application, such as Final Cut, and I go for something on the bottom of the window and the Dock happily pops up in my way.
I have no problem with the moving trash can, because I never drag anything to the trash, instead I just hit Command-Delete. Much more time-saving than dragging a file all the way down to the Dock.
I could never put the Dock on a side of the screen. It’s too small for my purposes. I hate magnification, and I have too many applications in my Dock to use it on the side without magnification.
The Dock is attactive but waste of space. i generally keep it hidden.
Thanks for the article. I was wondering wtf was going on that I couldn’t dock my panels on the right side. Mystery solved, push it further to the right.