Changing the Dock's Behavior

[Brutalbrutus]

Hello, everyone. When clicking application icons in the Dock, the application launches. Well and good.

But when you click on a folder in the Dock, what appears is a very attractive, transparent, rectangular display of the items in that folder. If not many items, the transparent display will show them all. If many items, the transparent display will show some of them, usually showing the first items in the folder by alphabetical sort.

My question is about changing OS X's behavior regarding these transparent displays. Is there a way to control what goes into them--maybe causing them to show the most recent items? or electing to see the largest items? It seems to always sort alphabetically and show you the first items alphabetically. What about making the Mac stop this transparent display altogether? I mean, would it be possible to click on the Documents icon, and thereby cause the Documents window in a Finder window to appear?

Many thanks in advance for your sage advice. I hope you find this question interesting.

 

[Sital]

You can change the sort order by right-clicking on the folder in the dock and choosing your desired sort option (although size does not seem to be a choice).

And if you hold the command and option keys when you click on the dock folder it will open in Finder. The other way would be to make an alias of the folder and then drag the alias to the right side of the dock. This will then just open in Finder with a normal click.

 

[Brutalbrutus]

Oh! What a helpful, comprehensive answer. Thank you.