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Stacks will kill your dock productivity - Read this if you use folders in your dock!
- Thread starter jbg232
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iPhoney - I wouldn't do that unless you absolutely can't work without it (as you have done till right now).... Leopard is awesome!
Well, it may not have solved the OP's problem, but this tip solved mine. I got very used to having important folder shortcuts on my Dock that opened in Finder. This solution (with a hack to remove that little arrow) works perfectly for me.
This is the worst bollocks Apple could have come up with. Has someone from Microsoft ingratiated into Cupertino or what?
1) Before I installed Leopard did I had a very good overview in the Dock over all the folders with sub-folders I used daily. Now must I really have to look through each subfolder one by one to find what I am looking for. And Spotlight might do it for me since I not always remember what I file or folder was named as before I sees it.
2) What makes it worst is that each folder now is showing its content in the Dock. Since I have various icons on many of my folders to identify them quicker do I now have lots of various pictures stacked on eachother in the Dock. With this cleaver little feature is the Dock looking like a museum of bad-taste modern art.
So not only is it butt ugly but it is also hopeless to work with. What a bummer!
Sure, this feature was certainly something that looked good for a showcase presentation. But it is in most cases worthless to work with in my opinion. This feature could certainly be good for some, but it is not a feature for me.
I am seriously planning to move back to Tiger. Only thing that can stop me is if quickly Apple announce that they will come up with a quick fix so we who don't want this feature can turn it off. So I will wait about teen days to see if Apple will consider this or not. Luckily can I return Leopard within two weeks time if Apple wont reconsider. I guess I wont be the only one either.
It should have been possible from the beginning to turn on and off this crappy feature. It if for the pure amatures if you asks me.
1) Before I installed Leopard did I had a very good overview in the Dock over all the folders with sub-folders I used daily. Now must I really have to look through each subfolder one by one to find what I am looking for. And Spotlight might do it for me since I not always remember what I file or folder was named as before I sees it.
2) What makes it worst is that each folder now is showing its content in the Dock. Since I have various icons on many of my folders to identify them quicker do I now have lots of various pictures stacked on eachother in the Dock. With this cleaver little feature is the Dock looking like a museum of bad-taste modern art.
So not only is it butt ugly but it is also hopeless to work with. What a bummer!
Sure, this feature was certainly something that looked good for a showcase presentation. But it is in most cases worthless to work with in my opinion. This feature could certainly be good for some, but it is not a feature for me.
I am seriously planning to move back to Tiger. Only thing that can stop me is if quickly Apple announce that they will come up with a quick fix so we who don't want this feature can turn it off. So I will wait about teen days to see if Apple will consider this or not. Luckily can I return Leopard within two weeks time if Apple wont reconsider. I guess I wont be the only one either.
It should have been possible from the beginning to turn on and off this crappy feature. It if for the pure amatures if you asks me.
Would anyone be able to point those of us that didn't even know Tiger could do this cool folder app/dock thing - in the right direction to learn how to do this?
Rank - If you go back to Tiger, make sure you check out the Mosaic screen saver first. It's nuts.
As mentioned on page 2 this does NOT work as it is presented. There is currently no known way to regain Tiger Dock functionality although many forum posters here and in other places have offered lots of money to hackers, developers, and users to think of a solution be it shareware, coding, etc.
Yes, Mosaic looks nice. Too bad it wont increase the effeciency how to find the stuff I know is there somewhere.
As it is now do I need to have every single sub-folder in the dock, and that would mean some hundred folders. Which will lose the whole point with the dock.
It is better to just start a clicking on the harddrive and start searching the old-school way, folder by folder. Kind of funny don't you say.
What I don't get is why we can't turn this feature on and off. It can't be that difficult for a cleaver company as Apple.
What more I don't understand why this feature Stacks must show each folders content even when not clicked. The Dock looks like **** as it is now. See screenshot below to see what I mean.
Attachments
Another problem is that when you put aliases in a folder, and make that folder a stack, Stacks doesn't render the alias icons, so you just see generic white file icons in your stack. Ugh. 
Possible Solution? Please Test and Report...
Ok, so the macosxhints forum on this issue (which also has an insane number of reads for this problem) posted that A-Dock can work like the old ctrl-click tiger dock. As I don't have leopard yet does anyone know if this is the case? Please report back.
You can get A-Dock here:
http://jerome.foucher.free.fr/ADockX/ADX_features.html
Ok, so the macosxhints forum on this issue (which also has an insane number of reads for this problem) posted that A-Dock can work like the old ctrl-click tiger dock. As I don't have leopard yet does anyone know if this is the case? Please report back.
You can get A-Dock here:
http://jerome.foucher.free.fr/ADockX/ADX_features.html
That's exactly how I wish it was. I don't mind stacks, but add the ability to right click a folder from a stack (either fan or grid view) to get a list of what's in that folder that allows you to navigate through sub-folders (just like it was on Tiger when you right clicked a Folder in the dock).
That's pretty much the EXACT language I sent to apple via the feedback link. I didn't say "stacks stink, I hate it, get of rid"...I simply requested an enhancement to have an additional option to view as hierarchical menu.
Does anyone know of a hack that would allow you to drag and drop a file to an alias?Another problem is that when you put aliases in a folder, and make that folder a stack, Stacks doesn't render the alias icons, so you just see generic white file icons in your stack. Ugh.
You know, I completely understand where all of you are coming from, especially since I also used the old style feature all the time as well, but what I don't understand is how many of you are deciding to stick with Tiger over this ONE single issue.
If this feature is a make or break issue for you, then why on earth would you upgrade even if they did bring that feature back in leopard?
I mean do you see where I am coming from? If that feature is what makes you stick with Tiger... then stick with Tiger and don't even comment on here about Leopard, because you are basically saying that there is no compelling reason what so ever to upgrade to Leopard, and you only wanted to do it so you could say you had the latest version of the OS.
Personally, there are many things I would love to see different about leopard or even things that changed that I wished would have stayed the same, but there are enough new features for me that the upgrade is worth it... but if this feature is the deciding point, then there is no reason for you to upgrade at all... just stick with Tiger and start posting in the tiger threads of this forum.
If this feature is a make or break issue for you, then why on earth would you upgrade even if they did bring that feature back in leopard?
I mean do you see where I am coming from? If that feature is what makes you stick with Tiger... then stick with Tiger and don't even comment on here about Leopard, because you are basically saying that there is no compelling reason what so ever to upgrade to Leopard, and you only wanted to do it so you could say you had the latest version of the OS.
Personally, there are many things I would love to see different about leopard or even things that changed that I wished would have stayed the same, but there are enough new features for me that the upgrade is worth it... but if this feature is the deciding point, then there is no reason for you to upgrade at all... just stick with Tiger and start posting in the tiger threads of this forum.
jbardi- When I started this forum I wanted people to know that they would lose this feature when they upgraded to Leopard and to reconsider that in the equation of costs vs. benefits of upgrading. While there are many features of Leopard that I am thoroughly excited about (Time Machine, Spaces, Screen Sharing, Boot Camp, 3d Dock, etc.) this one issue goes to the core of how I use my computer. Do I want those other features? Yes! Do I want to lose this major part of how I navigate and interact with my computer? No! I think that what we are all upset about is that an upgrade should enhance an experience and not take away from it in any "core" way. I personally feel that removing the ctrl-click dock folder access is a core feature that really will change the way I have to use my computer without replacing it with anything better aside from some pretty graphics. While I do want time machine and spaces, the cost for me is something I will have to contend with.
Also, I think that there is a philosophical problem with what apple has done by taking out the nested folder access. Take the example of the qwerty keyboard. Briefly, the qwerty keyboard layout was designed when typewriters were first invented to be as inefficient as possible so that people would be slow when typing so that the keys didn't jam on each other when coming up to the page. The dvorak keyboard which has a different layout is designed to maximize typing efficiency. Now, could I adapt if apple chose to only support the dvorak keyboard? Yes, I could. Would it be right for apple to do so? No, it would interfere with a core piece of my computing experience and likely make me less efficient. A computer at its heart is supposed to allow you to do things effectively and taking away this core feature without improving upon it is a real slap in the face to the computer experience for the people who use it. Granted, stacks is a much smaller example but the same thing is true - apple is taking away a core feature of the computing experience and replacing it with something far worse.
In the end, I would love to use time machine, spaces, and screen sharing, but at the cost of no dock folder access for me it is a hard sell that I still have to think about before upgrading.
Also, I think that there is a philosophical problem with what apple has done by taking out the nested folder access. Take the example of the qwerty keyboard. Briefly, the qwerty keyboard layout was designed when typewriters were first invented to be as inefficient as possible so that people would be slow when typing so that the keys didn't jam on each other when coming up to the page. The dvorak keyboard which has a different layout is designed to maximize typing efficiency. Now, could I adapt if apple chose to only support the dvorak keyboard? Yes, I could. Would it be right for apple to do so? No, it would interfere with a core piece of my computing experience and likely make me less efficient. A computer at its heart is supposed to allow you to do things effectively and taking away this core feature without improving upon it is a real slap in the face to the computer experience for the people who use it. Granted, stacks is a much smaller example but the same thing is true - apple is taking away a core feature of the computing experience and replacing it with something far worse.
In the end, I would love to use time machine, spaces, and screen sharing, but at the cost of no dock folder access for me it is a hard sell that I still have to think about before upgrading.
It is fast for applications, but not so great for managing lots of documents nested 3 or 4 folders deep. The old system even allowed a mouse/keyboard hybrid to navigate the folders.
Stacks is quite awful for this.
I wouldn't mind Stacks either as long as I can navigate through the five-seven sub-levels of folders that I have in my Document folder.
Why not give us the possibility to assign different buttons on the mouse (we now days have more then two buttons on must mouses) for different functions. On for old-school (Tiger) right-clicking on folders, one for Stacks and maybe a third for Stacks settings (this one can be located to the System preference).
To give you an idea how I have organised my Dock here on my Tiger system (my Cube at work is running Tiger).
I have several folders for different categories to the right in my Dock:
- One is for pure work related documents (at least seven levels of subfolders here - don't work with Stacks)
- One for various categories of files that I have downloaded during the years (at least four levels of subfolders - don't work with Stacks)
- One is for more or less private related documents (at least six levels of subfolders here - don't work with Stacks)
- One for icons (at least six levels subfolders here - don't work with Stacks)
- One for various types of programs that I use every now and then - Work perfect with Stacks
- One for all the Apple programs - Work perfect with Stacks
- One for various Internet programs - Work perfect with Stacks
- One for various Utility programs - Work perfect with Stacks
- Finally do I have the HD in the Dock as well to quickly and very handy be able to navigate to any part of its content (Don't work with Stacks)
To the left in the Docks do I have all the program that I use on a daily or regular basis.
Why not give us the possibility to assign different buttons on the mouse (we now days have more then two buttons on must mouses) for different functions. On for old-school (Tiger) right-clicking on folders, one for Stacks and maybe a third for Stacks settings (this one can be located to the System preference).
To give you an idea how I have organised my Dock here on my Tiger system (my Cube at work is running Tiger).
I have several folders for different categories to the right in my Dock:
- One is for pure work related documents (at least seven levels of subfolders here - don't work with Stacks)
- One for various categories of files that I have downloaded during the years (at least four levels of subfolders - don't work with Stacks)
- One is for more or less private related documents (at least six levels of subfolders here - don't work with Stacks)
- One for icons (at least six levels subfolders here - don't work with Stacks)
- One for various types of programs that I use every now and then - Work perfect with Stacks
- One for all the Apple programs - Work perfect with Stacks
- One for various Internet programs - Work perfect with Stacks
- One for various Utility programs - Work perfect with Stacks
- Finally do I have the HD in the Dock as well to quickly and very handy be able to navigate to any part of its content (Don't work with Stacks)
To the left in the Docks do I have all the program that I use on a daily or regular basis.
Possible Stacks Fix!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ok, Kudos to Geobunny at the macosxhints forum who figured out this hack to get the hierarchical menu navigation back to leopard. I have not tried this out as I still don't have tiger but here it is word for word
"Well well well, it seems you can use the Dock from 10.4 which gives you navigable contextual menus back! There are a few caveats but in my opinion it's well worth the loss.
1) You lose Spaces. Happily there are a number of free 3rd party apps which still work to a certain extent although you can't move windows between different virtual desktops after the window is open but I can live with that.
2) The Dock doesn't hide automatically when you go into Time Machine. Happily, command-option-D takes care of that (and the desktop icons are still dock-aware).
3) Dashboard loses the speed increase brought about by the Leopard Dock, but you only notice that on first entry to Dashboard.
4) iCal's icon goes back to being static. Meh, easy come easy go.
Obviously you need access to a copy of 10.4's Dock, but I'm not at liberty to give you that. You also need to use the Terminal. Anyway, here's how you do it.
First, copy the old Dock into the same folder as the new Dock.
cd /System/Library/CoreServices/
sudo cp -Rp /PATH_TO_YOUR_TIGER_INSTALLATION/System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app ./DockInactive.app
Now, in your favourite text editor, create a plain text file containing the following code
sudo mv /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app /System/Library/CoreServices/DockTmp.app
sudo mv /System/Library/CoreServices/DockInactive.app /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app
sudo mv /System/Library/CoreServices/DockTmp.app /System/Library/CoreServices/DockInactive.app
killall Dock
Save the file somewhere. Anywhere. It doesn't matter where you save it as long as you've got easy access to it and that it's a plain text file. Give it a meaningful name and make sure the extension is .command not .txt or anything else. My file is called "toggleDocks.command". Now go back to the terminal and type "chmod u+x " (without quotes), drag your file into the terminal window and hit return.
You now have a double-clickable icon on your computer which allows you to toggle easily between using the Dock from 10.4 and 10.5.
I'm now away to scour through all the pre-release builds to find the last one in which contextual menus were still available and working mighty well indeed."
You can view his post here:
http://forums.macnn.com/90/mac-os-x/351884/stacks-usability/5/
I am going to post this on the main page so that people will be able to search the title as I have tried to do at all mac forums on this issue and come up empty-handed too often.
Once again, please report back if you use this fix and thank you Geobunny.
Ok, Kudos to Geobunny at the macosxhints forum who figured out this hack to get the hierarchical menu navigation back to leopard. I have not tried this out as I still don't have tiger but here it is word for word
"Well well well, it seems you can use the Dock from 10.4 which gives you navigable contextual menus back! There are a few caveats but in my opinion it's well worth the loss.
1) You lose Spaces. Happily there are a number of free 3rd party apps which still work to a certain extent although you can't move windows between different virtual desktops after the window is open but I can live with that.
2) The Dock doesn't hide automatically when you go into Time Machine. Happily, command-option-D takes care of that (and the desktop icons are still dock-aware).
3) Dashboard loses the speed increase brought about by the Leopard Dock, but you only notice that on first entry to Dashboard.
4) iCal's icon goes back to being static. Meh, easy come easy go.
Obviously you need access to a copy of 10.4's Dock, but I'm not at liberty to give you that. You also need to use the Terminal. Anyway, here's how you do it.
First, copy the old Dock into the same folder as the new Dock.
cd /System/Library/CoreServices/
sudo cp -Rp /PATH_TO_YOUR_TIGER_INSTALLATION/System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app ./DockInactive.app
Now, in your favourite text editor, create a plain text file containing the following code
sudo mv /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app /System/Library/CoreServices/DockTmp.app
sudo mv /System/Library/CoreServices/DockInactive.app /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app
sudo mv /System/Library/CoreServices/DockTmp.app /System/Library/CoreServices/DockInactive.app
killall Dock
Save the file somewhere. Anywhere. It doesn't matter where you save it as long as you've got easy access to it and that it's a plain text file. Give it a meaningful name and make sure the extension is .command not .txt or anything else. My file is called "toggleDocks.command". Now go back to the terminal and type "chmod u+x " (without quotes), drag your file into the terminal window and hit return.
You now have a double-clickable icon on your computer which allows you to toggle easily between using the Dock from 10.4 and 10.5.
I'm now away to scour through all the pre-release builds to find the last one in which contextual menus were still available and working mighty well indeed."
You can view his post here:
http://forums.macnn.com/90/mac-os-x/351884/stacks-usability/5/
I am going to post this on the main page so that people will be able to search the title as I have tried to do at all mac forums on this issue and come up empty-handed too often.
Once again, please report back if you use this fix and thank you Geobunny.
In regard to having a stack on the dock for your Applications folder - what really annoys me is that it's ALWAYS the address book on top. Yes, you can resort, but the resorting options aren't useful to me. There needs to be an additional sort, called "By Last Access" or "Latest Opened", so that the more recently/frequently used Applications get sorted to the top of the stack. (Hate to say this, but kind of like how Windows Start menu works... ugh.) I just hate the Address Book staring me in the face all the time! (Also don't really like that the downloads stack is always a disk image for me cause that's the first file in the folder... thought about creating a "dummy" file in Downloads and Applications that just has the icon I want to use as first in the stack. Crazy workaround, but it might work.
Dragthing
When I was using Tiger, I also dragged my Home folder to the taskbar to allow me to browse through my files, but I found a different method to accomplish the same thing.
I use DragThing and created three icons, one for my Home drive, one for my Applications folder and one for my Pictures folder. The nice thing about DragThing is that you can do the Right-Click to see the folder/file structure, but you can see previews for the files (pictures, MP3, PDF and so on).
The only downside to DragThing is that it an additional objects on the desktop and there is a cost involved. But, I still use it in place of Stacks on my Leopard setup. DragThing was also update to work with Leopard.
When I was using Tiger, I also dragged my Home folder to the taskbar to allow me to browse through my files, but I found a different method to accomplish the same thing.
I use DragThing and created three icons, one for my Home drive, one for my Applications folder and one for my Pictures folder. The nice thing about DragThing is that you can do the Right-Click to see the folder/file structure, but you can see previews for the files (pictures, MP3, PDF and so on).
The only downside to DragThing is that it an additional objects on the desktop and there is a cost involved. But, I still use it in place of Stacks on my Leopard setup. DragThing was also update to work with Leopard.
How to re-enable standard viewing in stacks
Here's a tip from another forum (thanks vertigociel):
If you want to disable the standard icon view of stack icons to make it look like a folder again this hack out:
"Interesting - I've been trying to enable List view through the com.apple.dock.plist, but haven't been able to manage it. I've found the number to change to get automatic, fan, and grid view (0 is auto, 1 is fan, 2 grid), but changing it to "3", alas, only puts it back in automatic sorting.
I also managed to get it to act as a folder - if you change the "tile-type" string to "folder-tile", it'll show up with its own icon in the dock, like so:"
Here's a tip from another forum (thanks vertigociel):
If you want to disable the standard icon view of stack icons to make it look like a folder again this hack out:
"Interesting - I've been trying to enable List view through the com.apple.dock.plist, but haven't been able to manage it. I've found the number to change to get automatic, fan, and grid view (0 is auto, 1 is fan, 2 grid), but changing it to "3", alas, only puts it back in automatic sorting.
I also managed to get it to act as a folder - if you change the "tile-type" string to "folder-tile", it'll show up with its own icon in the dock, like so:"
Attachments
Er no, I meant the other part of the sentence. That people would not upgrade to leopard solely because they could not get this windows start menu style UI.