$ defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES; killall Dock

This may already be my favorite Leopard hint of all. Keep up the good work!

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Great!!! Can we vote already? ;)

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I love the fact that the "open application" dots are so much more visible against the 2D dock. I even threw the white wallpaper behind it and could easily tell which apps are open.

I wouldn't mind the 3D Dock if the light-blue marbles weren't so hard to see against the "reflection" of the Dock surface.

I actually submitted a Leopard hint for the contest, but if this one ends up winning I won't complain...

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The blue dot files (indicator_large.png, indicator_medium_simple.png, indicator_medium.png, indicator_small_simple.png, indicator_small.png) can be found here:

/System/Library/CoreServices
Right-click on Dock and "show package contents"
/Contents/Resources/

Be sure to check out http://www.blambert.co.uk/smokedock/ for a tamed-down version of the 3D dock.

Have fun, and remember to backup!

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broken link

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ok so how I do I UNDO the 2D dock if I want to and get the 3D dock back???

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Well it's not exactly fair that you get it early! Thanx for the hint, Im gonna give the 3D dock a couple days and then try this. Time for Onxy, TinkerTool etc to be updated.

Oh and here's my hint tip: check the plist files! - they offer soooo much cool tweaking.

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Yes but does that change the behavior of (for example) putting a folder of alises of common apps in the dock that you would normally see? IE a stack of the sub folders with no ability to see THEIR contents.

Yeah the Leopard dock broke my favorite launcher: a folder with folders of alises of apps in them... dag nabbit!

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I think stacks are going to be the big disappointment in leopard. the limit of 9 icons in fan mode, the inability to adjust the icon sizes, no stacks of random items, no sub-folders in stacks, the removal of right click folder listings. Most of that functionality was in the earlier beta builds and there are still settings for them in the dock plist, so hopefully apple only removed them because they couldn't work out all the bugs before the final release and they'll be restored in one of the first updates.

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Sadly, Leopard broke the ability for the Dock to be on the top of the screen, which is where I've had it since the 10.0 days (on top, pinned to the right). This makes me very, very unhappy.

Leopard = poo. :(

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Are you serious?

I also have used orientation = top ; pinning = end; for years.

Anything else seems unnatural. Bottom-up is so Windows Start. Left, the Dock is always covering the close box, and on the right, it's scroll bars.

I hate Apple.

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Ok I guess we won't be seeing you around much more then.

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Any way to enable Glass when the Dock is on the left or right-hand side of the screen?

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Yeah, that's the hint I want- I like the dock on the side of the screen, but I really, really like the 3D Dock. I would guess that perhaps moving it to the side simply changes this preference automatically, so perhaps changing the yes to a no would re-enable it on the side, but I can't test until Friday. If anyone knows and would be so kind to post, it would be appreciated.

---
Aluminum iMac 20" 2.4 GHz/3GB/300GB HD

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The value is set programmatically, so forcing it to "NO" (ie 3D effects on) has no effect: as soon as you toss the dock to the edge, it turns 2D again.

-rob.

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Right, but what if you set it AFTER moving the dock? Is it reset the next time the dock restarts, or just ignored? Like I said, I was just guessing :)

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Aluminum iMac 20" 2.4 GHz/3GB/300GB HD

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It's just ignored. The Dock app seems to reset the pref when you drag it to the side.

-rob.

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Now we're all just waiting for the follow-up hint on how to turn the menu bar opaque.

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I hope it's coming, but so far, the best I've been able to do is to make the top 22 (I think that's the number) pixels of your desktop images solid white.

Lame, but it works.

The hint I'm *really* digging to find is the one to set the menus' opacity -- not the menu bar, but the menus themselves. So far, no luck, though I continue to scan strings output for various binaries.

-rob.

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Anybody know of any screenshots of the new menus? Or are they the same as in the last developer seed?

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so far, the best I've been able to do is to make the top 22 (I think that's the number) pixels of your desktop images solid white.

My copy of Leopard hasn't arrived yet, but this should work anyway:

http://www.harmless.de/download/OpaqueMenuBar.zip

It's a small app I whipped up, that places a borderless white window directly below the menu bar. No UI whatsoever. To get rid of it you will have to kill it using Activity Monitor or the command line.

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No, it won't work (and I just tested it to be sure). This is what Peter Maurer's Non-Transparent Menu Bar did, too, but it too no longer works in the final version.

-rob.

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Too bad. I really hope, someone will find a working hack. (And maybe we should file a bug since the menu bar is supposed to be translucent, but apparently isn't ...)

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Hi!
What does this script o and how can I revert? As noted, it doesn't tranlucency - but it adds a fat white line to the top of vm's full screen mode, making it inaccesible!
Please help!

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how about a wallpaper with a 22px white strip at the top?

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You two aren't serious, are you?

OSX never had the option to pin the dock on the top of the screen out of the box. You must have used tools like Tinkertool to get that. And if it's not working any more in Leopard, well, it just means you'll have to wait till your OS tinkering tool of choice gets updated.

---
All these moments will be lost in time
Like tears in rain.
Time to die.

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Oops, I meant this to be a reply to Oneota...

---
All these moments will be lost in time
Like tears in rain.
Time to die.

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The problem is that the plist setting that was used to move the dock to the top of the screen has been removed from 10.5 -- so the hack won't be updated, because it's no longer possible.

Why? My guess is that it was because the 3D dock casts shadows and reflections, and seeing those at the top of the screen would've been strange (the shadows would've technically gone up into the menu bar, for instance).

Now that there's a 2D dock alternative, perhaps we'll see this plist setting return in a future update -- but I won't hold my breath for that one :).

-rob.

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While I respect subjective opinion, I'm amazed at how very wrong everbody is about the new Dock. It is *functionally* superior to the old dock in almost every way:

http://www.consumermachine.com/?p=285

I'm happy we can customize with hints like this, but I hope everybody realizes they are switching to an inferior tool.

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We're not comparing it to the OLD dock. We're comparing it to the new alternative dock. And in that comparison, for me, the 3D version is simply the pits.

The article you reference makes a number of statements, but there's no hard evidence (ie scientific studies) included to back up those statements. I, on the other hand, will never claim science in this debate. I just know I prefer working with the 2D dock over the 3D dock.

-rob.

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I disagree with everything the author says in that article.

While I really don't want to write as long an essay about it, just a few points:

The docks bounding box is "telling me not to go there"? I guess we should remove borders around windows, too.

The reflections make it "easier to find" the dock icons? I'm perfectly aware where my dock icons are; I don't have to "find" them, thank you very much.

I could go on. But thankfully it isn't necessary, since I can just disable all that visually distracting nonsense.

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Padriac, just because that article says everyone is "wrong" and the modified design is an "inferior tool" doesn't make either statement true. Many of the points in that article are matters of opinion, and some of them are just plain illogical.

If you like the new Dock appearance, great; you'll be happier with Leopard than some other people ;-)

---
Dan Frakes / Senior Editor, Macworld / Senior Reviews Editor, Playlist

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I think this is the first time ever that I will be disabling a feature of OS X. I can't stand the 3D dock. It's distracting.

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Hmmnn... can't seem to get this one to work for me (ran it a few times in Terminal.app), but still seeing 3D Aero--oops, I meant "glass" effect.

robg: where did Apple announce the lifting of the NDA? Wow, this feels liberating... for about a day.

I'm running 10.5 Build 9A559 on iBook G4 14/1.42 GHz, but try it on x86 iMacs at work tomorrow.

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Since the 2D side-dock was added between 9A559 and the GM, I'm guessing the optional 2D bottom-dock was too...

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Being coverered by the NDA, we're not allowed to discuss changes in beta and/or GM builds. Suffice it to say that this definitely works in the GM. (Just because the NDA was lifted doesn't mean we can now start discussing what was in the seeds.)

As for when did Apple announce the lifting of the NDA, that's not something they announce in a press release. We were told by our Apple PR contacts that the NDA was being lifted.

-rob.

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Don't include the "$" when you cut and paste into the Terminal.

---
"Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
-- Ben Franklin

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It seems that Apple just made a bunch of random changes to one-up Vista's random glittery changes.


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I too used to use a bunch of folders full of aliases in the Dock as my main app launcher.

Luckily, I just found a new tool called QuickPick:

http://www.araelium.com/quickpick/

When you hit a hot key or click on its Dock icon, it brings up a full screen menu, which can have multiple pages, where each page is like a Finder icon view. And if you right-click the Dock icon, it provides a menu with each page as a folder.

So assuming it still works in Leopard, it might be a good replacement.

-Esme

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Just out of curiosity, is there any way to enable the 3D dock while on the side? I only ask for speculation, as I always have mine on the bottom anyways :)

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(insert sig here)

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I'm surprised no one has mentioned TransparentDock, if only by way of pointing out another option. Namely, that of keeping everything about the 3-D Dock but the silly Floor!

I'm really hoping someone will figure out an option to remove the "Floor" without changing anything else... The nice thing is, that would also make it easier to have it work when viewed on either side!

It seems Apple has, in recent years, moved away from the old days of ultimate flexibility in modifying the GUI. It's probably because things have gotten so complex, but hopefully they'll find some happy middle ground where we can do at least some of the things we'd like to be able to do!!!

Thoughts?

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Unfortunately, TransparentDock doesn't work with 10.4.9 or later -- including Leopard.

---
Dan Frakes / Senior Editor, Macworld / Senior Reviews Editor, Playlist

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I don't know whether it will work on Leopard or not, but ClearDock works on 10.4.10 and allows changing of the docks color and transparency, or adding a border... http://unsanity.com/haxies/cleardock

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I hope there is a way to iTunify the scrollbars. I want consistency.

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That article – feh! The author doesn't seem to have any sense of direction and clearly doesn't recognize that the enemy's gate is down. Plus, his (?) judgment is dubious: he's running ads for Michelle Malkin.

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Oh thank you, thank you, thank you. The new 2D dock was just terrible. The 2D doc is vastly easier to visually use!!!

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- Jonah Lee

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I posted this as a hint, but I know it's a bit of a duplicate, so hey.
I'm plugging my app, my very first I'd add :)
It does what the terminal command does, but in a nice user-friendly gui :)
Which is for those who are incredibly loathe to use the terminal, or those for whom it's blocked.
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/26070/dockswitcher/link



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My complaint with the 3D dock isn't so much the floor or the shadows, I like those, what bothers me is those light blue balls that show you what apps are open. They're almost IMPOSSIBLE to see over the icon reflections (most of which are light blue). If there was a way to change the style of those, I'd be much more interested in the new dock design.

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I actually like the feel of the new Dock (didn't at first). The only problem I have is that the Stacks are functionally much worse than they were in 10.4 (yes, they were there).

In 10.4, if you dragged a folder to the Dock you essentially got a somewhat less-flashy version of Stacks. When you right-clicked on the folder, you got a pop-up menu that displayed the contents of the folder in a list, and let you navigate easily. However, they regressed this in 10.5.

- If you had a large folder full of stuff, you could see most of it on one screen in a nice list form. Maybe it's just me, but it's much harder for me to find stuff when it's scattered around a bunch of rows in big icons across the screen. I'm looking for the name, not the icon.
- If you have sub-folders, you can only navigate to them by opening a new finder window. That kind of defeats the purpose of the stacks. In 10.4 the contents of a sub-folder would just pop up in a list when you selected it. In earlier versions of 10.5 sub-folders would even come up in a stack-like view when you clicked on them, which was somewhat acceptable, but now they just open a Finder view.
- Custom icons are a pain. In 10.4 I could easily identify which "Stack" in my dock was for what purpose at a glance. Every folder had its unique icon. Now I just get the icon of whatever the top thing in my folder is, which might change regularly (and which might make no sense). I can sort of fix this by adding a dummy file into the folder with the icon I want, but why should I have to?
- Aesthetics suck. When I first saw how the icon in the dock was just a big "jumble" of all the icons in the folder, I thought it was a bug. It just looks so messy, like they meant to draw only one icon but accidentally drew each, painting one overtop of another in a big mess.

I hope there's a Dock param to bring the old stacks mode back. I like some of the prettiness and how they're finally advertising the feature, but functionally it's a huge step backwards.

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To revert back to the default dock simply change the boolean to NO instead of YES ie defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean NO; killall Dock

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Mac Pilot has a checkbox to toggle between 2D/3D. No messing with Applescripts or the command line needed.

There are also many other customizations available in Mac Pilot and *censored*tail.

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this "hint" just erased all my keyboard shortcuts, eg. spotlight search, which does not come back on when you go into system preferences. anyone?, the author perhaps?

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