Silly Dock Trick

brianleahy

brianleahy

Colonel Panic
This is pretty elementary, but *I* didn't know it was there:

Open an application - Mail for instance.

Minimize the Mail window so that it "genies" into the dock.

Now, with the app still active, go to its Application menu and chose "Hide "

As you do this, watch the minimized window's icon in the dock. Whee!

Then click on the App icon to unhide it, and watch again.

-BL
 
I noticed that yesterday when I installed Space Dock (for vitual desktops). It works using this hiding feature so everytime to change virtual desktops and you had a window minimized, you see this event. At first I didn't realize why this was happening. Pretty cool.



Oh, I almost forgot...

Wheeee! :)
 
Wheee!

It's fun having fun with "Stupid GUI Tricks". Whoever says that stuff like this is nothing but CPU drainers doesn't have a fun bone in their body. All work and no play makes Jack/ie a dull boi. Why shouldn't computers make my day a little brighter?
 
On a similar note, we all might know that option-clicking on another application's window will hide the current application as you switch, but I just discovered that <u>option-clicking on the menu bar clock</u> does the same thing--especially handy for quickly hiding the Finder since you can't option-click on the Desktop and hide the Finder.

-Rob
 
Originally posted by paulsomm


I don't care that the animation is included, but it'd be nice to choose to not use it. I.e. if there was a toggle like in (hate to mention it, but) Windows2000 where you can disable all animations. On a fast machine the overhead isn't really noticed unless you're a server (and OSX consumer edition is not server-quality to begin with, though it's excellent otherwise and not meant to be in the first place) but on a slow machine, i.e. my 300Mhz G3 Wallstreet, it's painful to watch an icon skip choppily along, freezing up my word processor while it does so.
Click to expand...

First, OS X is definitely SERVER quality. Look at all the SERVER applictions that wil run on it now... and run VERY, VERY WELL!!!

Given, OS X is NOT OS X Server, but the client in this case is very well suited to stand on it's own as a Server OS.

Second, you can turn off part of the animations regarding the Dock, including magnification and app opening icon bouncing. I'm sure at some point you'll be able to turn off all the ones you want to get rid of, just give it time.

Ciao

PS - My G3/400 Firewire Powerbook has no problem witht he animations and multi-tasking, and I only have 192 MB in it. have you defragged and optimized your HDD? Have you checked out all the firmware updates?
 
Originally posted by plaidpjs
OS X is definitely SERVER quality. Look at all the SERVER applictions that will run on it now... and run VERY, VERY WELL!!!
Click to expand...

Server apps don't make it server quality. LinuxPPC, NetBSD, etc beats the pants off OSX in terms of speed and performance. OSX is opitmized for desktop usage, not network I/O and the likes. Yes, it's a very good OS and does serving functions very well, but it's not suited to be a server, nor does Apple intend it to be.

Yeah, I was whining :)

And, yes to all your questions.

And regarding animations, there are a lot of workarounds. For one you can do away with the dock all together and use DragThing. You can turn off the Desktop as well, even go so far as to have the terminal.app become the "finder" when you log in. they just aren't as fun as being able to choose to keep the mac look and feel but not the cheesy cartoons.
 
I had already posted this elsewhere in the forum but you can type:

defaults write com.apple.Dock mineffect genie
defaults write com.apple.Dock mineffect suck
defaults write com.apple.Dock mineffect scale

To switch between the 3 dock animations. Scale is fast and the closest to no animation.
 
Originally posted by paulsomm

Server apps don't make it server quality. LinuxPPC, NetBSD, etc beats the pants off OSX in terms of speed and performance. OSX is opitmized for desktop usage, not network I/O and the likes. Yes, it's a very good OS and does serving functions very well, but it's not suited to be a server, nor does Apple intend it to be.
Click to expand...

Obviously they didn't intend it to be a Server, but they did intend it to do some low end serving work, hence the inclusion of Apache for personal web sharing.

But, as I said in another line OS X is not OS X Server (which is intended to be a primary Server product).

Anyway I digress, before it starts sounding like I'm trying to start an argument.
 
I've loved it since I first discovered it a few months ago.. It's the little things that make us say oooh and aaah that are cool.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top