dock issues...

bolindilly

John Galt Member
i'm having a couple of personalizing functioning issues with the dock, and i was wondering if people had answers or similar woes... (these are mainly issues with lower resolutions like 800x600)


1st: when i have a white window open (like a browser, textedit, or appleworks window...) the names of dock items are hard to see (the blackish outline isn't enough). does anyone have an issue seeing this stuff?

2nd: if i have the dock on autohide or just normally there, the dock is an issue when windows open near the bottom of the screen... whenever i mouseover on autohide, the dock pops up, not allowing my do drag or make the window smaller. if the dock is normally up, it blocks the window also...

so, what do people think???

bolindilly

ps- anyone know how to make the default font size smaller or turn off anti-aliasing text?
 
My only piece of advice is to add a dark background. Apple inclues a good amount. While i know that this wont solve the problem while a white screen is behind the dock, it will solve your problem moderately. It will alos make minimized screen much easier to differntiate because the colors in each thumbnail will stand out better. Sorry about the lack of a better answer.
 
there will never be an answer for all situations. If the text was dark then when something dark was behind the dock, people would complain about not being able to read the text. if the text were grey (or some other midtone) then there would be even more people complaining about the lack of contrast.

don't use a white background.

as for the antialiasing, it actually improves the legibility of the text unless the font choice was specifically designed to look good onscreen (such as this type). and before anyone complains that Apple should have done such a thing, you have to remember that this type is thin and would be hard to distinguish from background elements.

I'm certain that the folk at apple tried a large variety of fonts and effects to have maximum legibility -- don't forget that the dock didn't used to have these text names all that long ago... count your blessings ;)
 
it sounds as though you have the dock set at the bottom of the screen. the easy way to alleviate problems moving things to the bottom without running over the Dock is to move it to the right or left. That combined with auto hide should resolve all but one of your problems - the text color. but, as said earlier, there is no way to really answer that one as dark text would become obliterate on dark background windows, just the same as white.

I for one have no problem seeing the app names because of the black shadowing when over white backgrounds. but that's probably just me... maybe!

Ciao
 
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