[BlueRabbit]

So, because of this thread, I've started wondering who hides their Dock and who doesn't. Personally, I do. It just gets in the way if you don't hide it.

[johnq]

I rarely hide it, since triggering it accidentally is more annoying than leaving it up.

I keep them at 32x32 though. (If you resize the Dock while holding option it snaps to all the non-scaled icon sizes).

I also used Transparent Dock to get rid of the dock background and borders.

[julesstoop]

I hide my dock and because I have a wide aspect display: It's on the left of my screen.

[kretara]

Hide my dock? Of course I do.
There is no way in hell that I would give up the screen realestate for a dock. I keep it on the left.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by kretara There is no way in hell that I would give up the screen realestate for a dock.

That's my reasoning as well whether I'm on my 12" or 19".

To me, it's useless clutter and wasted space for the 99% of the time that I'm not spending launching applications or dragging documents to the icons for opening.

[omem]

mine is always there. as it has been said before, its more annoying to accidentaly trigger it than to give up a few pixels on screen for it. besides, i like knowing what apps are open and where the icons are

[thuh Freak]

Originally Posted by omem mine is always there. as it has been said before, its more annoying to accidentaly trigger it than to give up a few pixels on screen for it. besides, i like knowing what apps are open and where the icons are

thats my feeling, when i use osx. bothers the hell out of me when i remote into someone's machine at work, and their windows taskbar is missing; b/c its never clear that their bar is hidden or if my vnc/whatever window is just too small. when i use someone else's osx computer, i usually turn hiding off pretty quick.

[Bryson]

I hide mine all the time, unless I'm doing Video editing and then it goes on the LHS. I use the Donnelschi Dockthing to switch them around.

Strangely, when i use windoze, I never hide the taskbar. Dunno why not really.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Bryson Strangely, when i use windoze, I never hide the taskbar. Dunno why not really.

Same here.

The difference is that the taskbar lets you see a lot more information at the cost of much less real estate because you can still very clearly discern most Windows program icons at that small size. Since Mac OS X developers tend to neglect the smaller icon sizes, the same can't be said for the dock.

Also, the taskbar doesn't doesn't grow or shrink and it doesn't offer a moving target.

[Random Hero]

Even though the dock is over 5 years old, I'm still an eye-candy whore, and with Transparent Dock, I keep it open proudly.

[Ebby]

It is there in 3 of my users, and hidden in 4, so I choose "B".

I hide it to get that little extra screen space when I use applications that need it. Other than that, it is nice to have your Apps at the ready.

[Mac+]

I originally hid my dock on the left, but now it resides hidden on the rhs. (I can't quite recall, but I think some apps would not open flush to the lhs and it bugged me.)

Perhaps this poll should also ask about location and icon size too, to make it more comprehensive.

[EDIT] It was also because I could not access the portion of the window underneath the dock if I had it exposed on the rhs ... hence my move to the lhs. After a while I decided to hide it.

[Fooboy]

how do you get a transparent dock to remove the outline?

[Luca]

Originally Posted by Fooboy how do you get a transparent dock to remove the outline?

www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/6490

Actually, some of the people posting reviews said they had problems with that one. So you can try this one too:

www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/8808

[thegelding]

hide...on the bottom

g

[onlyafterdark]

Mine is hidden at the bottom. I need every inch of screen space I can get with a 12" screen. Plus, I think its just weird to have it up all the time.

[johnq]

You know what? I'm going to *try* using it hidden and on the left now, because I use Launchbar and command-tab so much. Last I had it on the left was without LaunchBar...

I'll give it a week, see if I grow into it.

[torifile]

On the right and never hidden. I like to keep it there so I can see when I get new email. Plus I rarely use programs that need more than a document sized window.

[johnq]

Ok, since I use Exposé hot corners, I have to leave it not hidden, on the left. I kept sliding into the corner and triggering the Dock. This feels natural. More vertical space, no interference with hotspots or scroll-bars or palettes.

Only thing is, I used to use the dock to remind myself to use the other programs that aren't running. ADHD? Like "Oh yeah, I have Painter. I should use it now." I'm afraid that a stripped down Dock (of only running apps) might make me forget to do things. We'll see.

[Ryan]

Mine's hidden on the bottom. When I'm working on my computer, all the programs I might need(Safari, Mail, GraphicConverter, SubEthaEdit, OmniOutliner, iChat, iTunes and NetNewsWire) are already launched, so I just use Cmd-Tab to switch between them, and some, like Mail and NetNewsWire, are kept on my Powerbook's screen, while the one's I really using are on my external display.

[rollercoaster375]

(Not that I have a Mac... Yet...) I keep my Dock on the left side of my screen, at 20 by 20 px. (Transparent) I don't hide it cuz if I did, I would forget about it. :/

[Franz Josef]

yeah baby

[BuonRotto]

I leave it up most of the time, and hide it when I want the space by pressing command-option-d. I've grown quite comfortable with this arrangement.

I don't hide my Windows taskbar ever for a couple of reasons. For one, the behavior for bringing it up is annoying in my experience. It tends to have a hair trigger when you move the pointer down there, and stays up too long even after pulling your mouse far away. I've gotten into these frustrating patterns of bringing the cursor down, the taskbar popping up, pulling the mouse halfway up the screen until the taskbar hides again, going back down the screen, the taskbar pops up, repeat ad nauseum. XP is better in this regard, but I've gotten so frustrated with it previously, that I don't bother even at this point.

The other thing about the Taskbar that makes hiding it more problemmatic is that it is a lot more vital to my workflow than anything in the Dock. The mixed environment on Windows -- some apps use parent-child windows which are always maximized on my computer; some don't; some look like they do until you open more than one, then they don't -- makes the taskbar more important for navigating than the Dock. On my Mac, I can either drag and drop among open windows since I never have maximized windows that block everything below, or I use Expose when something is occluded.

slight tangent: I've never really gotten into the copy-paste pattern that Windows users use so frequently even though I use Windows everyday. If I did work that way more, I would probably need the taskbar else than I do now. I've seen a lot of Windows users try to do everything copy-paste on a Mac, and don't usually consider drag and drop. It's still a hit or miss thing on Windows mainly in terms of how it behaves. It's not that it isn't fairly pervasive, just that it means different things in different situations.

That's not knocking the Dock. I'd rather have a more simplified Dock or set of Docks (stilll love the tabbed Dock of OpenStep 4.2 beta) to use for shortcuts than to burden it with more functionality and a Finder/Spotlight-like role. The taskbar is going in the other direction of course, and there is merit to the idea of a small persistent area that is a central control center for the user, aka something akin to the Start menu. But their apparent similarity I think contributes to user frustration more than it helps in a transition from one to the other. (Mind you, the Dock came first from NeXT, and Microsoft took ideas from the Apple menu and the NeXTstep Dock to come up with the taskbar we know and *choke* love today.)

I wonder how many people work with the Dock or the Taskbar a certain way because they were more familiar with one to begin with, and they try to use the other in the same way.

[CitizenTony]

Both the Dock and the Windows Taskbar are hidden and on the bottom. Screen real estate would be the reason, but it also looks better.

I keep my Dock at the smallest size with a very slight magnification. I only keep my most used applications sitting on it.

On windows, I keep my Start menu nice and tidy. I can't figure out how people never clean it up after installing everything. How do they find anything?

[BuonRotto]

Most people can't figure out how to clean it up, hence the train wreck Start menu for most people. That was the problem with the old Apple menu as well IIRC if not quite as bad, if I may dovetail into another discussion.

[Luca]

It was far worse before MS added drag and drop functionality with Windows XP. Before that, you had to right click, choose properties, click the "Start Menu Programs" button, and THEN you could customize it. Much like having to go into the "Apple Menu Items" folder in order to customize the old Apple menu in OS 9.

The Start menu is still pretty bad, mainly in how the "programs" in it are neither aliases (shortcuts in Windows-speak) nor the actual program itself, but rather a "launcher" program put there by the installer. It really confuses me. On the other hand, it is nice that you can reorganize it without messing things up. I really wish you could do that with the Applications folder in OS X. I have my Apps folder in the dock, but you're not allowed to sort things otherwise Software Update doesn't work. No word on whether this is fixed in Tiger, but I'm assuming it's not because I don't think Apple sees this as a problem. Even though it is. I guess Spotlight might change things because you won't even need to go hunting for a program, just type in the name and BOOM there it is.

[johnq]

So, should I keep my Pages and Keynote in an iWork folder as was installed?

I wouldn't mind, if the folder had an icon. I guess I'll crack open CanCombineIcons and make one...and leave it alone.

[BlueRabbit]

Originally Posted by johnq So, should I keep my Pages and Keynote in an iWork folder as was installed? I wouldn't mind, if the folder had an icon. I guess I'll crack open CanCombineIcons and make one...and leave it alone.

Yes, leave them in that folder. I think that SW Update is rather obtuse, and won't see them if you move them somewhere else.

Also, I wish that the Dock had spring-loaded folders. Does anyone know if Tiger has this?

[Mac+]

If you mean being able to navigate into the contents of a folder, by clicking and holding the mouse button, then I've got slf in the Dock using Panther.

[SledgeHammer]

No, SLF refers to the effect of dragging a file over a folder, then after a few seconds, the folder opens, so you can drop the folder in it, or continue springing open folders, drilling your way down the heirerarchy. I'm hoping for slf-in-dock in Tiger too, but I don't know if it will have them or not.