Tài liệu Setting Up the Dock phần 1 pptx

The concept of the Dock is simple: Any icon you drag onto it Figure 4-1 is installed there as a button.. When you're trying to find a certain icon in the Dock, run your cursor slowly acr

4.2 Setting Up the Dock

Apple starts the Dock off with a few icons it thinks you'll enjoy: Dashboard, QuickTime Player, iTunes, iChat, Mail, the Safari Web browser, and so on But using your Mac without putting your own favorite icons in the Dock is like buying an expensive suit and turning down the free alteration service At the first opportunity, you should make the Dock your own

The concept of the Dock is simple: Any icon you drag onto it (Figure 4-1) is installed there as a button (You can even drag an open window onto the Dock—a Microsoft Word document you're editing, say—using its proxy icon [Section 1.2.4] as a handle.)

A single click, not a double-click, opens the corresponding icon In other words, the Dock

is an ideal parking lot for the icons of disks, folders, documents, programs, and Internet bookmarks that you access frequently

Tip: You can install batches of icons onto the Dock all at once—just drag them as a

group That's something you can't do with the other parking places for favorite icons, like the Sidebar and the Finder toolbar

Figure 4-1 To add an icon to the Dock, simply drag it there You haven't moved the original file; when you release the mouse, it remains where it was You've just

installed a pointer—like a Macintosh alias or Windows shortcut

Here are a few aspects of the Dock that may throw you at first:

• It has two sides See the whitish dotted line running down the Dock? That's the

divider (Figure 4-1) Everything on the left side is an application—a program Everything else goes on the right side: files, documents, folders, disks, and

minimized windows

It's important to understand this division If you try to drag an application to the right of the line, for example, Mac OS X teasingly refuses to accept it (Even aliases observe that distinction Aliases of applications can go only on the left side, and vice versa.)

• Its icon names are hidden To see the name of a Dock icon, point to it without

clicking You'll see the name appear above the icon

When you're trying to find a certain icon in the Dock, run your cursor slowly across the icons without clicking; the icon labels appear as you go You can often identify a document just by looking at its icon

• Folders and disks sprout stacks If you click a folder or disk icon in the right side

of the Dock, a list of its contents sprouts from the icon It's like X-ray vision

without the awkward moral consequences Turn the page for details on stacks

• Programs appear there unsolicited Nobody but you (and Apple) can put icons on

the right side of the Dock But program icons appear on the left side of the Dock automatically whenever you open a program, even one that's not listed in the Dock Its icon remains there for as long as it's running

Tip: The Dock's translucent, reflective look is something to behold Some people actually

find it too translucent But using TinkerTool, you can tone down the Dock's

translucence—a great way to show off at user group meetings See Section 17.1 for

details

GEM IN THE ROUGH Living Icons

Mac OS X brings to life a terrific idea, a new concept in main-stream operating systems: icons that tell you something If the Dock is big enough, you can often tell documents apart just by looking at their icons

Some program icons even change over time The Mail icon, for example

(Chapter 19) bears a live counter that indicates how many new email messages

are waiting for you (After all, why should you switch into the Mail program if

you'll only be disappointed?) The America Online icon sprouts a flag to let you know if an instant message is waiting You can make your Activity Monitor

graph (Section 6.4) show up right on its icon Toast illustrates the progress of a disc you're burning And if you minimize a QuickTime movie while it's playing,

it shrinks down and continues playing right there in the Dock

Think of the possibilities One day the Safari icon could change to let you know when interesting new Web pages have appeared, the Quicken icon could display your current bank balance, and the Microsoft Word icon could change every

time Microsoft posts a bug fix

4.2.1 Organizing and Removing Dock Icons

You can move the tiles of the Dock around by dragging them horizontally As you drag, the other icons scoot aside to make room When you're satisfied with its new position, drop the icon you've just dragged

To remove a Dock icon, just drag it away (You can't remove the icons of the Finder, the Trash, the Dock icon of an open program, or any minimized document window.) Once your cursor has cleared the Dock, release the mouse button The icon disappears, its passing marked by a charming little puff of animated cartoon smoke The other Dock icons slide together to close the gap

Tip: You can replace the "puff of smoke" animation with one of your own, as described

on Section 17.2.2

Something weird happens if you drag away a Dock program's icon while that program is running You don't see any change immediately, because the program is still open But when you quit the program, you'll see that its previously installed icon is no longer in the Dock

4.2.2 Stacks

A stack is what you get when you click a disk or folder icon on the Dock—and it's one of Leopard's marquee new features The effect is shown in Figure 4-2

Tip: If you press Shift as you click, the stack opens in slow motion Amaze your friends

In essence, Mac OS X is fanning out the folder's contents so you can see all of them If it could talk, it would be saying, "Pick a card, any card."

Tip: You can change how the icons in a particular stack fan are sorted: alphabetically,

chronologically, or whatever Just choose "Sort by" from the Dock folder's shortcut

menu, and choose from the submenu Your choices are Name, Date Added (to the Dock), Date Modified, Date Created, or Kind

UP TO SPEED The Deal with Dock Shortcut Menus

Every icon on the Dock hides a little shortcut menu filled with useful

commands And every Macintosh book author gets sick and tired of describing

the three different ways to open it

This Macintosh book author has decided to write it up once, in this box—and

then refer to this blurb every other time the shortcut menu is mentioned in the

chapter

Way 1: Control-click any Dock icon

Way 2: If you have a mouse with two buttons, right-click any Dock icon

Way 3: If you're in no rush, click any Dock icon, but keep the mouse button

pressed The shortcut menu pops up automatically up to speed

4.2.2.1 Fan vs grid

Sometimes there are too many icons in a folder to fit in a fan In that case, the stack

becomes a grid instead (Figure 4-2, bottom) The grid, of course, holds many more icons than the fan, although it's not as pretty

Figure 4-2 Top: When you click the icon of a folder or disk on the Dock (just one single click), you get this effect: a rainbow that shows what's inside Click an icon to open it, just as though you'd double-clicked it in a window You can even Option-click one icon after another, opening them all while the stack remains arrayed

before you

Or grab an icon and drag it right out of the stack—into another window, say Bottom: If there are too many icons to fit in the arc (as determined by your monitor size), you get this grid instead Alas, here, too, space is limited If there are more than fits on the grid, click the "35 more in Finder" icon at the lower right You go to the folder's regularly scheduled window, where you can see the complete list of

icons)