dock ideas...

[VGZ]

I'm going to post this w/ Apple but I thought I would toss it out to all of you as well.

I like the new features of the dock; however, it would be better if one could drag an item onto a docked folder and get a menu so that they can drag it to a specific location in the folders sub-directory structure. Think pop-up menu.

The new menus on the dock appear to be limmited to 5 levels as they are in OS 9. This is unacceptable and the limit should be removed.

The new toolbar is great and I have heard that one can drag items into the toolbar as if it were a shelf. I think that a nice feature to add that I have heard existed in next would be to be able to drag an item to the toolbar from one folder and then drop it in another to move it. This would be very useful when in browser view as it would allow someone to move an item from a sub-folder to the "shelf" and then switch to another sub-folder elsewhere and drag it off the "shelf" into that folder. Example: downloads directory in users home directory to an internet sub-folder in the Application directory.

Let me know what you guys think about this,

 

[zpincus]

I asked for exactly the same things a few days ago, VGZ. Uncanny. (Or perhaps not... did we both read the wincent review?)

Anyhow, my thinking now is that 4K17 isn't even as advanced as the MWSF version (can't drag preferences.app items into the dock, for example), and I'm sure many features of this version are simply incomplete, and planned for tightening up. Hopefully, drag and drop to the dock popups is such an obvious feature that it was already planned.

I'm not sure about the notion of the toolbar being a shelf -- might be messy, concept-wise (clearly some things need to function like buttons -- "home" and "find" being things that make no sense to be able to move elsewhere). But perhaps the "shelf" thing could be demarcated from the "button" area of the toolbar? Anyhow clearly they have some more things to do to the toolbar before it is ready fro prime time. (like making a "poof" when items are dragged off, etc.) Hopefully something like a shelf is in the works.

As far as only being able to traverse 5 levels deep, I agree that this is foolish and needs fixing. Such a limit smacks more of "design choice" rather than "incomplete" -- so I hope they think again...

Even if OS X is "feature frozen" I think that comments are great. I'm keeping giving them, and I'm glad to see others are too.

Zach

 

[Mr. Mysterious]

C'mon, now I know your ideas are cool and you're just submitting your opinion, but I mean Mac OS X (in MY opinion) is the best OS in the world by far! It looks cool and is more "personalisable" than any other. There are some faults, but the fact is it's the best you can get, and it's damn good at that. Don't get me wrong, those are some crash hot ideas you got there, but no OS, not even the best, is perfect...

 

[endian]

it would be better if one could drag an item onto a docked folder and get a menu so that they can drag it to a specific location in the folders sub-directory structure.

According to a story on maccentral.com today, this is already done.

I think everyone realized that the dock needed this sort of functionality, but I was trying to get Apple to use anything but a menu - tabs on the dock, drawers, anything. It's always seemed odd to me to launch things from a menu, and it's going to seem even odder to drop things onto one. The dock's popups aren't exactly like menus (they have that arrow thing on the bottom) but I hope Apple will eventually do more to differentiate them, like giving them an inset bevel, and also add more functionality, like adding different view options, etc.


[Edited by endian on 01-31-2001 at 03:23 PM]

 

[zpincus]

Originally posted by endian

it would be better if one could drag an item onto a docked folder and get a menu so that they can drag it to a specific location in the folders sub-directory structure.

According to a story on maccentral.com today, this is already done.

Do you have the link to that story? According to this one, the opposite is true, and in fact the Apple guy talking sounds pretty clueless about the problems with the MWSF dock iteration. Read on:

However, you can't take a file from a Finder window or the Desktop, drag it to a Dock icon, and navigate through those new pop-ups to the place you want to move it to. Bourdon said the Dock lets you add to the top level of a folder, but its popup window functionality doesn't include the "spring loaded" feature of the traditional Mac OS. However, that's something that Apple would look into, he said.

Look into!? This is a totally obvious thing to do! They should have been all over that...
It seems like some obvious things have totally slipped past Apple -- like making a heirarchical dock in the first place, which Apple claims to not have even thought of until, oh, about 75,000 people asked for it after PB.

Or maybe I'm overreacting, and the Apple guy was just playing coy.

Zach

[Edited by zpincus on 01-31-2001 at 10:36 PM]

 

[endian]

whoops, I took this (from the same story) to mean that it was:

For instance, if you click
on a drive or folder icon, you can navigate through its contents via menus. And you can drag
and drop items from several folders deep in these product menus.

I guess I was so overjoyed I tuned the next paragraph out

I agree, this is definitely something Apple needs to do before the final release.

 

[AdmiralAK]

Hi gang!
Just an idea here:
I have been using NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP under VPC these days t see what they look like. I dont know if any others have used these two OSes, but some standard apps are on a doc on the right of the screen (a vertical one), and the apps that are running are displayed on a dock that is dynamic in structure on the bottom of the screen like the OS X dock, dynamic = app is in use app shows up, apps is not running, icon disappers.
I kinda like this idea, what do you guys think ?


Admiral