Change System Panes!

mr_mac_x

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I have created a new hack (i think)! When you open up the System Prefrences, there are a bunch of differnt files that make up each pane. For the sake of a good example, I am going to use the Dock Prefrences pane. But, these steps should work for every pane, although I haven't tried.

1) Navigate to /system/library/prefrences (NOT in the terminal).

2) Control-click on the prefrence named "Dock.preference". Select "Show Package Contents". It will open a window with the stuff in the package.

3) In the Contents window you just opened up, navigate to /contents/resources/YOUR LANGUAGE/, replacing YOUR LANGUAGE with the language in which you want the changes to take place. Open "DockPref.nib" or the other *.nib file with Interface Builder - it comes on the Developer CD.

4) You should now have a window open with the contents of the Dock pane in it. If you did not open "DockPref.nib" but the other one instead (I renamed it to "DockPref.nib" so it would show up in the Sys Pref) you will also see the Orient and Pin settings. Those two don't work for me, but they may for you. I have sucsessfuly changed the Dock sizes, though.

5) To change the Dock sizes, just open up the "File's Owner" and select the slider (the top one for standard size and the bottom one for magnification). Then change the Minimum and Maximum values (I find -0.1 and 1.0 nice for minimum and maximum standard sizes, and I like 0.0 to 3.0 for Magnify sizes, respectivly). Also I made another text box and a popup menu so you can select the minimize type, but that doesn't work because I don't know what to link it to.

Well, that's all I know. If anyone knows how to make the Orient and Pin popups work, along with my Minimize popup, *please* reply!

Now that I can do all that, I AM THE KING!
 
If you search for Pin and Orient elsewhere on this site, you should find out how to make those popups work (albeit not in the System Preferences). It amounts to a simple editing of a plist, so don't worry, it's not too scary or complex. But then, if you were worried about that, you wouldn't have installed the devtools and be mucking around in the system folder. :)
 
You don't understand - I have that hack working and all, but it would be nice to be able to change it from the Sys Prefs. And it works with more than just the Dock, it should work with *every* pane.
 
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