Perhaps this will help...
Hello! This is my first post at MacRumors.com, so I'm hoping I get this right, and don't clown myself...
At any rate, it sounds like this is what you want to do....
I have to run a program to access my on-campus mail account, and registrations systems, while off campus called VPNClient. The thing is, once it's connected, I want it out of my way, and more importantly, out of my dock, where it's just a waste of space (and on a 15" studio display, dock real estate is a big deal)... so here's two possible solutions.
1. There's a program called "Dockless" that launches, and you can select the programs which you wish to launch without a dock icon showing up. or, if you're feeling a little more adventurous...
2. Open up the applications folder, right click on the naughty dock-space stealing application, and right-click (option-click) on it, and select "Show Package Contents", and then navigate to "Contents", and finally to the info.plist file. Click on that to launch it in some form of a text editor (BBEdit, etc). Then, at the bottom, paste these two lines of code:
<key>NSUIElement</key>
<string>1</string>
- or -
<key>LSUIElement</key>
<string>1</string>
I'm not sure exactly what these things mean, but it seems to do the trick. I have had more luck with the first one, though. You may have to log out, or shut down before these changes take effect. Also, if you ever want the dock icon to appear again (don't know why, really) then just change the 1 back to a 0, or delete the lines of code, alltogether.
One big draw back is that you will have to minimize the window to get it out of sight on the desktop, or if you use a program called WindowShade X, you can minimize it as a tiny little icon on your desktop. It rocks.
The other drawback is that while the program is loaded, the menu bar options are gone, as long as the dock icon is hidden. So you can't change preferences, or anything that goes on in the menu bar (unless you do a key command, possibly?!?). So set the program up the way you want, plop in the code, or run Dockless, and your dock woes will be eliminated.
Have a good day. Hope this helps.