Valhalla Island

I’m not the kind of person to stick with software just because it’s “what I’m used to”. I’m the opposite, I actively look for more efficient software, better interfaces, something that suits my needs more closely, I’m always editing preferences. There are so many possibilities when it comes to the dock that I’ve spent a year and a half trying to get it right. These are my observations.

I wish Last.Fm ran in the menu bar.

Despite the screen grab, my dock is not currently positioned on the bottom. It’s on the left hand side, visible with magnification off. It contains about ten of my most used apps, at least eight of which are open all the time. Anything I need to open that’s not in the dock gets opened with Quicksilver. This is the product of circumstance and months of carefully evaluated experience.

The most common dock configuration I see on computers at school, of my friends and in screenshots is the all in one approach. Every application you have installed, whether you’ve ever used it or not. These docks usually still contain the entire iLife suite, including iDVD, as well as the link to Apple’s website and Dashboard. Their owners may not know that it’s possible to remove dock items, not that they would if they had that knowledge.

This is an example of the all in one.

This method defeats the purpose of a dock. It’s a shortcut menu, it’s not your applications directory. The more objects in the dock the harder a single item is to find.

Screen size and screen configuration are almost the defining factor in dock configuration. When you have 1600 vertical pixels, a visible dock placed on the bottom is not a space hindrance. On a Macbook, vertical space is more valuable than horizontal space. So should you position your dock on the side or just hide it on the bottom?

The right side is not an option, it’s dedicated to a hidden and sliding Adium.

There is rarely anything on my desktop. My desktop is not a permanent home, it’s a halfway house where files come only to find their feet and be on their way. A file on the desktop is like a to-do item on a short list.

My original hidden dock philosophy was to stop using the dock all together, just Quicksilver and alt + tab. When I first started using a Mac I think the dock was the reason I used alt + tab a lot less, which is a shame because alt + tab is fast.

This worked well, it was quick and I wasn’t distracted by more recreational dock applications while working. While I wasn’t being distracted I also wasn’t being notified of useful information the dock displays, such as unread email.

A hidden dock made me notice how much I use one of the dock’s greatest strengths — drag and drop. Being able to drag any kind of information or file from inside or outside apps and onto apps in the dock is extremely useful, hell this is what makes OS X extremely useful. Not using the dock at all was not effective. Sure you can still drag things onto a hidden dock but there’s this awkward split second pause before it slides into the open position. For a split second it’d always seem like it wasn’t working. This also happened when pulling up a hidden dock like usual. It never felt right.

Back home where I use a second, much larger display on my computer’s left so left side dock was not an option, it’s just too far away to be useful. At the same time, I had a lot more screen space so a visible dock on the bottom wasn’t a big deal. Now, with just a single, small, widescreen display a left hand side dock is perfect. I conserve vertical space, I can still see icon state changes and dragging is quick and simple.

As a side note, I use Unsanity’s Clear Dock to reduce the opacity of the dock’s too-opaque-by-default background.