xkcd

by **Griffin** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 1:16 am UTC

By which I mean the things that macs and some linux distros have. Actually, I have to be honest, I'm mainly starting this topic because I have no earthyl idea why people like them or use them. I can't think of a single situation where I want the programs and stuff I CAN run mixed in with the stuff I am currently running. I like the fact that windows splits them up. The only thing I don't like is that when I open a certain number of windows it collapses them and makes them super annoying for me to use - I would have opened them in tabs if I didn't want to be able to see them, thank you very much.

I have also heard windows 7 is now doing the dock thing as well, mixing my wonderful little Quick Launch section in with my running programs.

Dear god, why? I simply don't get it in the slightest. So if anyone can explain it to me, please do. Oh, also, if anyone else has any preferences outside of these two approaches, bring them up - maybe there's another system that uses something superior to the windows method (I certainly hope so anyway) to keep track of your various open files and programs and I'd be happy to try it out.

by **GourdCaptain** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 4:56 am UTC

I don't get the mixing of running and non-running apps either. Now, I personally like a lot of linux docks better than the windows taskbars because I can have multiple bar with some really cool monitors on them, but that's a personal thing.

by **OOPMan** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 6:53 am UTC

Well, some of the more intelligent docks, like the one in E17, allow you to segregate the dock into
areas for running apps, installed apps, etc, etc. And you can have multiple docks. So, it's a win both ways.

by **lulzfish** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 2:37 pm UTC

I'm a fan of the "taskbar + run command" option.
The Start Menu doesn't get used a whole lot, and icons only make it harder for me to launch programs. I launch programs command-line style when possible.

by **Endless Mike** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 3:16 pm UTC

I haven't found the Dock to be terribly useful. I only keep my most-used programs in there, so it ultimately ends up with a bunch of in-use apps, anyway, and I use Expose to switch between apps, anyway. There's a reason I keep it hidden most of the time. Anything else I launch using Quicksilver, which isn't part of the OS. The XP Taskbar is probably more useful in that regard than the Dock, but only because the things I use in OS X don't have an equivalent (or a good one, anyway), so I'm stuck with the Taskbar. Common apps are in the Quicklaunch. The Windows 7 Taskbar is somewhere in between, but I think manages to be more useful than either.

by **ash.gti** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 3:18 pm UTC

The Mac dock is pretty smart, but its usefulness is more linked to the way programs run on OS X. In most OS's a window being open = a program instance. In OS X that its not the case. In OS X a program can be open and running with no windows or multiple windows or a single window, etc. In OS X if you open Safari and have 10 windows open you still only have 1 Safari image on your dock. If you quit Safari then its going to close all the windows. Thats not really the same as say Safari works in Windows. If you have multiple instances of Safari open and you quit, it only closes the current one you have selected.

The advantages of the dock being designed the way it is emphases the way programs work in OS X and I personally don't like having a 'dock like' tool in Windows or Linux when I am running them, they just don't work with those OS's the way it works in OS X. I do love it in OS X though. It works with the way the OS was designed perfectly.

tl;dr
dock is good in OS X
dock is bad in windows, linux, etc...

by **headprogrammingczar** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 3:43 pm UTC

Alt-tab ftw. That is all.

by **hotaru** » Mon Jun 08, 2009 4:33 pm UTC

lulzfish wrote:The Start Menu doesn't get used a whole lot, and icons only make it harder for me to launch programs. I launch programs command-line style when possible.

they've made the start menu a lot better in vista and windows 7... i usually just hit the windows key and then type the name of the program and hit enter, (sort-of) unix command-line style.

by **Griffin** » Tue Jun 09, 2009 1:57 am UTC

Personally, this is my setup on windows - desktop is for easy access to folders and frequently run programs that are run independently (games and such).
Quick Task launch bar is for programs that I frequently need to use with other programs like internet/openoffice/so on and the button that goes to the desktop (speaking of which, is there a better way to do this?).
Alt-tab and task bar for switching between different programs, depending on how many I have open or whether I am already using the keyboard or mouse.
Start menu for rarely used programs I don't remember the name of, or where to find.

This E17 thing mentioned, though... it looks really interesting. I'm going to have to learn more about it.

lulzfish wrote:icons only make it harder for me to launch programs

Why is that?

ash.gti wrote:The Mac dock is pretty smart, but its usefulness is more linked to the way programs run on OS X

This is actually a pretty good point, now that I think about it. The whole having the program open without having any instances would be confusing to handle for the windows style taskbar ... I have to ask though, is the way they handle it really superior to the tabbed style that a lot programs use nowadays to accomplish a similiar effect?

by **Amnesiasoft** » Tue Jun 09, 2009 3:11 am UTC

GourdCaptain wrote:I don't get the mixing of running and non-running apps either.

That's basically the whole point of the change in Windows 7. They're trying to mostly hide the difference between an app that is running and ones that aren't. Probably because that concept is still too complex for the average person to handle...

Even so, I really like the way the Windows 7 taskbar works. Since it's a combination quicklaunch and isn't centered (and therefore grows to the right, instead of on both sides), my programs are always in the same place. And being able to touch the window thumbnails to peek at windows is far easier than trying to find the window I want by name.

by **Dream** » Tue Jun 09, 2009 9:05 am UTC

Griffin wrote:I can't think of a single situation where I want the programs and stuff I CAN run mixed in with the stuff I am currently running.

So put the programs you CAN run into a pop up menu, and leave the Dock proper blank. Then the Dock will show the running programs, and the potential programs will pop up in an arc across the screen when you hover over that icon. I'm always sympathetic toward UI issues, they're very important. But there is no excuse for bagging a program because you don't know how to use it.

by **Qaanol** » Tue Jun 09, 2009 6:30 pm UTC

I agree with the original poster. Actually, I find the Windows taskbar much less annoying than the Mac OS X Dock, but that's kind of misleading. In Windows it seems like you can't get by without the taskbar, so it's a necessary evil. On Mac OS X, what with alt-tab and alt-tilde and Exposé keyboard shortcuts, I would gladly never see the Dock. The only things in my Dock permanently are the Trash and my Applications folder. I used TinkerTool to put the Dock in the top-right corner of the screen, vertically. That way it's most similar to the OS 9 Application Switcher. My Dock is as small as it can be made by option-dragging, but when I get home I'm going to try editing a plist to see if I can make it smaller. I never thought of that before, so if it works that'll be awesome.

I wish there were a way to make the Dock not auto-hide on mouse-over, but instead to have a key-combo that toggles visibility. Since that's not an option, I leave the Dock visible all the time, because at least then it doesn't jump up when I'm trying to do something else. I really want it to be invisible all the time though, with a key-combo.

Griffin wrote:The only thing I don't like is that when I open a certain number of windows it collapses them and makes them super annoying for me to use - I would have opened them in tabs if I didn't want to be able to see them, thank you very much.

By no means am I an expert, but unless things have changed substantially (I admit I've never used Vista) there should be an option available by right-clicking on the taskbar and clicking "Properties". In XP I think it's a checkbox labeled "Group similar taskbar buttons" and you can uncheck it. Of course, I could be wrong.

by **ash.gti** » Tue Jun 09, 2009 7:06 pm UTC

Qaanol wrote:I wish there were a way to make the Dock not auto-hide on mouse-over, but instead to have a key-combo that toggles visibility.

Command + Option + D
A good reference for OS X short cuts

Griffin wrote:I have to ask though, is the way they handle it really superior to the tabbed style that a lot programs use nowadays to accomplish a similiar effect?

See I have many programs open with no windows all the time, like photoshop, or textmate, or terminal, so when I need a window its nice and snappy for me. Many programs still let you take advantage of tabs within a window (even photoshop cs4 now has tabs in each individual window) so really tabs are designed to server a different purpose than a window. Like for instance I normally have 2 Safari windows open, one with the website I am working on (tab 1 is probably the public side of the website, tab 2 is probably the administration side, tab 3 is DB with phpmyadmin, tab 4 is the server stuff if I need it). So each window is really like its own project for me.

When I combine that with Spaces its very convenient because I can dedicate a Space and a few windows to a single task I am doing and it helps me keep everything organized and helps me stay focused because I only have stuff I am working on in the space I am in. In Windows the taskbar (currently, i haven't used Windows 7 much so i don't know all the fine details of its functionality) has a tendency of lumping things together if you have to many things open at once and while tabs do help within a single program opening a new window can also be more helpful for organizational purposes and thats where the dock and mac's program functionality differ.

by **Qaanol** » Tue Jun 09, 2009 8:42 pm UTC

ash.gti wrote:
Qaanol wrote:I wish there were a way to make the Dock not auto-hide on mouse-over, but instead to have a key-combo that toggles visibility.

Command + Option + D
A good reference for OS X short cuts

Thank you for trying to help. Unfortunately for me, cmd-opt-d toggles auto-hiding, which means the same screen real-estate is occupied by the Dock as far as my cursor is concerned, except then it's not apparent which space the Dock occupies.

But I have been successful with the plist. Inside com.apple.dock.plist there's a field labeled "tilesize". I set it to 1, saved the plist, and used Activity Monitor to quit the Dock. The Dock relaunched as it always does, but wonder of wonders, the icons in it were only one pixel square! So now my Dock takes up a lilliputian 12x15 pixel rectangle. Setting tilesize outside the range 1-256 made it default to 128 (well, the plist didn't change back, but the displayed icons were at 128). With 1-pixel icons, my Dock is so small I have to zoom in on the screen if I want to select certain items. I can definitely live with this!

Also, I discovered a bug. I'm running OS X 10.4.11. With the Dock showing 1-pixel icons, if I turn auto-hiding on and mouse over an icon, the icon of the trash appears superimposed over the icon of my applications folder, at either 64x or 128x, I didn't measure, on the opposite side of the screen just below my Apple menu. And the "ghost icons" don't disappear when I hide the dock again. But since I don't use auto-hiding, it's working fine.

by **GourdCaptain** » Wed Jun 10, 2009 5:27 pm UTC

Amnesiasoft wrote:
GourdCaptain wrote:I don't get the mixing of running and non-running apps either.

That's basically the whole point of the change in Windows 7. They're trying to mostly hide the difference between an app that is running and ones that aren't. Probably because that concept is still too complex for the average person to handle...

But... memory usage. Cpu cycles being wasted. Dogs and cats, living together. Mass hysteria. (Brain explodes). Admittedly, I've been exposed to computers from near birth (hence why I know MS-Dos more than the average 18-year old), and have a very hard time getting in the new user perspective. I just see a lot more "my computer is running really slow" complaints coming out of this. Then again, I also dislike the icon-only representation of apps in Windows 7. Plus, my experiences with a Mac OS X computer have been ... baffling at the least until I figured out that it was a combo quick-launch and running application bar. (This was especially amusing because I was helping someone out with Word. One of us didn't know how to use a specific functionality in word, and the other was completely confused about the OS in general.)

by **stephentyrone** » Wed Jun 10, 2009 5:36 pm UTC

Qaanol wrote:Also, I discovered a bug. I'm running OS X 10.4.11. With the Dock showing 1-pixel icons, if I turn auto-hiding on and mouse over an icon, the icon of the trash appears superimposed over the icon of my applications folder, at either 64x or 128x, I didn't measure, on the opposite side of the screen just below my Apple menu. And the "ghost icons" don't disappear when I hide the dock again. But since I don't use auto-hiding, it's working fine.

You did file a bug report, right?

by **Qaanol** » Thu Jun 11, 2009 2:44 pm UTC

stephentyrone wrote:You did file a bug report, right?

It's the previous generation OS, with the Dock in an unsupported screen position, holding icons of an unsupported size. I had to modify the plist to get this behavior. I'll save my bug reports for when I leapfrog up to Snow Leopard.

by **ash.gti** » Thu Jun 11, 2009 3:11 pm UTC

Qaanol wrote:
stephentyrone wrote:You did file a bug report, right?

It's the previous generation OS, with the Dock in an unsupported screen position, holding icons of an unsupported size. I had to modify the plist to get this behavior. I'll save my bug reports for when I leapfrog up to Snow Leopard.

You won't be able to upgrade to Snow Leopard directly as a fore warning... Only Leopard can upgrade to Snow Leopard, if you have Tiger its reformat time.

by **Vault** » Fri Jun 12, 2009 2:37 am UTC

On Mac I'm quite partial to Quicksilver, which is far more than for launching applications. The more I've gotten used to it, the more useful it has become for doing things on the computer. It's like a context sensitive command line that can be summoned with a key press. My dock sits hidden at the bottom, more or less unused.

I've tried similar things to QS on Linux, but I haven't found one that works well enough, and it kind of feels out of place on it, so taskbars are usually the way to go.

I don't use Windows too often (just at school) and I really don't like its taskbar. It feels cluttered, and unresponsive and it doesn't really work for me.

by **OOPMan** » Fri Jun 12, 2009 10:50 am UTC

I use QuickSilver-alikes on linux all the time. Katapult for KDE is quite nice, KDE 4's KRunner is usable and the Enlightenment Run popup works pretty well.

Sure, none of them are quite as nice as QuickSilver, but they're better than task bar any day.

by **Grant10k** » Fri Jun 12, 2009 6:06 pm UTC

Griffin wrote:I have also heard windows 7 is now doing the dock thing as well, mixing my wonderful little Quick Launch section in with my running programs.

Dear god, why? I simply don't get it in the slightest. So if anyone can explain it to me, please do.

My take on it is, it doesn't matter if the app is running or not. I don't think it has anything to do with comprehention, making it easier for common users to understand.

The change is going from thinking "I want to start Firefox", to "I want Firefox".

In Windows 7, if I click the Steam icon, I get a running Steam. It doesn't really matter if it was started or switched-to, as long as it's in front of me after I press the button. If I want a web browser, I click on the Chrome icon. I no longer have to care if the app was previously running or not. It merges Start-Chrome with Switch-to-Chrome to become give-me-Chrome. It's not hard to check if an app was already running, but it's not necessary.

Plus, you don't have duplicate icons on the taskbar (icon for quicklaunch and icon for running app).

by **zombiefeynman** » Fri Jun 12, 2009 6:32 pm UTC

Grant10k wrote:The change is going from thinking "I want to start Firefox", to "I want Firefox".

That scares me. I'm not entirely sure why, it just scares me. I see a future in which people don't understand the concept of running programs, and when their daemons go south they say stupid things like "try looking at it. If you've looked at it it seems to work better." I see a future in which people don't actually know how to close programs, so they have to reboot every time their CPU load gets too high.

...

Yep. I feel better now. It's okay. No, I'm fine.

by **ash.gti** » Fri Jun 12, 2009 6:57 pm UTC

A lot of people new to OS X leave behind many programs that are still open because they don't realize that closing the window does NOT close the program for most OS X apps.

Windows 7 seems to be coming more in line with the OS X way of managing an app... I don't really know if thats a good or bad thing for windows, honestly I don't think it would work as fluidly as OS X does without them changing a few other aspects of the UI to accommodate for the fact a program could be running with no windows, but still, its blatantly obvious Windows 7 is trying to implement as many of the 'useful' features of other operating systems as it can, you can trace every one of windows 7's new features to either OS X or Linux.

by **stephentyrone** » Fri Jun 12, 2009 7:02 pm UTC

zombiefeynman wrote:That scares me. I'm not entirely sure why, it just scares me. I see a future in which people don't understand the concept of running programs, and when their daemons go south they say stupid things like "try looking at it. If you've looked at it it seems to work better." I see a future in which people don't actually know how to close programs, so they have to reboot every time their CPU load gets too high.

I see a future in which programs that hog resources while doing nothing are shunned (or just denied them by the OS), and operating systems do a good job of paging out memory that isn't in use. In my future, programs only present a system load when they are actively being used, and most users don't need to care how many programs are running.

by **zombiefeynman** » Fri Jun 12, 2009 8:07 pm UTC

I like your future better.But what if I minimized firefox because I didn't want to stare at a loading page for five minutes? What about programs intended to run without user interface? Will they be unfairly cut? And users still will be blinded to the idea of starting a program! What if they want to run something with different arguments? What if a program needs to be closed for updates? Ahhhhhh!

by **Grant10k** » Fri Jun 12, 2009 8:49 pm UTC

zombiefeynman wrote:I see a future in which people don't understand the concept of running programs, and when their daemons go south they say stupid things like "try looking at it.

People that don't get the underlying concepts of computers generally (from what I've seen) hit the X to dismiss windows (closing the program), or leave it running.

This would cause less running programs because when users hit the "I want Internet" button, they don't open a new instance every time. My mom could fill up any computer's ram with "Thank you for using Yahoo Email" pages if someone didn't swing by and close a few windows for her every so often. (I'm kidding, but not by much)

Have you ever told a user that they don't have much ram, to which they offer, "So I need to uninstall programs, right?". I realize users can sink lower than this, but ask yourself, "Can users sink much lower?"

ash.gti wrote:... to accommodate for the fact a [Windows 7] program could be running with no windows, ....

If you close the window in Windows 7, the program ends.

Edit: Also, I see a future where ram is so cheap, that all programs are loaded in ram at all times. Hard drives only exist to store data as long-term backups and swapping out ram sticks.

by **zombiefeynman** » Sat Jun 13, 2009 9:41 pm UTC

Grant10k wrote:Edit: Also, I see a future where ram is so cheap, that all programs are loaded in ram at all times. Hard drives only exist to store data as long-term backups and swapping out ram sticks.

Why do you people get all the good futures? My future has Parkinson's Law. *sad face*

by **Kalos** » Tue Jun 16, 2009 9:20 am UTC

TASKBAR + POPULAR PROGAMS (which can be put next to the task bar) = DOCK

by **Carnildo** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 9:10 am UTC

Grant10k wrote:Edit: Also, I see a future where ram is so cheap, that all programs are loaded in ram at all times. Hard drives only exist to store data as long-term backups and swapping out ram sticks.

Future? That's my present.

Back on the original subject of the thread, XFCE panels are the best: they're sort of a cross between the Windows Taskbar and the Mac Dashboard: you can have an area showing open windows, but you also can have a variety of other widgets (I've got one panel showing things like CPU and disk usage, for example). You could probably set one up to do a reasonable impression of the Mac Dock, but I haven't tried.

by **zombiefeynman** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 12:32 pm UTC

Carnildo wrote:Back on the original subject of the thread, XFCE panels are the best: they're sort of a cross between the Windows Taskbar and the Mac Dashboard: you can have an area showing open windows, but you also can have a variety of other widgets (I've got one panel showing things like CPU and disk usage, for example). You could probably set one up to do a reasonable impression of the Mac Dock, but I haven't tried.

Aren't they the same as gnome panels? And whatever KDE calls it's bar-thingies? Or can gnome not do the thing XFCE does where open applications are displayed as icons instead of little bars with icons and a title?

by **Agent_Irons** » Wed Jun 17, 2009 8:44 pm UTC

Carnildo wrote:Back on the original subject of the thread, XFCE panels are the best: they're sort of a cross between the Windows Taskbar and the Mac Dashboard: you can have an area showing open windows, but you also can have a variety of other widgets (I've got one panel showing things like CPU and disk usage, for example). You could probably set one up to do a reasonable impression of the Mac Dock, but I haven't tried.

This sounds totally awesome. When I eventually get around to reformatting the XP behemoth running downstairs and installing ubuntu on it, I had better make sure to check that out.

by **MHD** » Thu Jun 18, 2009 2:59 am UTC

Well, @ docks, I don't like not being able to easily jump between the windows that I need. And I'm a bit of a tweak freak.

by **Babam** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 4:31 am UTC

I just want to say you can disable the dockyness of W7 if you want to. I happen to have it disabled and I still love it.

by **LuNatic** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 6:06 am UTC

I favour the taskbar. Docks are too big and intrusive.

by **OOPMan** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 8:42 am UTC

LuNatic wrote:I favour the taskbar. Docks are too big and intrusive.

Right Click -> Configure

There, that wasn't so hard, now was it?

by **headprogrammingczar** » Thu Jul 09, 2009 12:12 pm UTC

OOPMan wrote:
LuNatic wrote:I favour the taskbar. Docks are too big and intrusive.

Right Click -> Configure

There, that wasn't so hard, now was it?

Mac supports right click now? When did this happen?
The above was sarcastic, in case you didn't notice

by **OOPMan** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 9:26 am UTC

headprogrammingczar wrote:
OOPMan wrote:
LuNatic wrote:I favour the taskbar. Docks are too big and intrusive.

Right Click -> Configure

There, that wasn't so hard, now was it?

Mac supports right click now? When did this happen?
The above was sarcastic, in case you didn't notice

Almost got me there you fiend...

by **shieldforyoureyes** » Fri Jul 10, 2009 2:13 pm UTC

The dockish thing I use (OpenBSD, fvwm) is mostly just for displaying info - it doesn't do any program launching.

Aside from the common stuff (CPU load, date/time, etc.) the really key things are:

xcb - display the cut buffer (clipboard) and a few scratch buffers
text messages - a bunch of space to display text messages, trivially accessable from shell scripts anywhere on the LAN

by **louiswins** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 5:31 am UTC

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned GNOME Do yet! I was introduced when I tried out Linux Mint and though I run Arch Linux now, I can't live without it. I haven't ever used Quicksilver, but it Do is pretty obviously based on it, and they seem very similar based on the Wikipedia pages.

A far as the dock v. taskbar question, I prefer a taskbar, but I've never really used OSX, so I can't really comment on it. I like some of the Linux docks, but they usually distinguish between running programs and launchers, which is good (IMO), but have been really unstable for me, which is bad.

This post seems really rambly, but it's midnight:30, so I'm not gonna fix it. Bwa ha ha ha!

by **crzftx** » Sat Jul 11, 2009 5:51 am UTC

Babamthegrunt wrote:I just want to say you can disable the dockyness of W7 if you want to. I happen to have it disabled and I still love it.

I set mine to display the open Window titles (like Vista or XP) when space permits. It serves as a nice intermediate; this way I know which programs are running as well as which instance is the one I want, without having to hover. But I still get only one icon per program (the quick launch icon simply expands with text when opened) and the ability to rearrange the icon positions.

I'm fairly certain this behavior is not default, but I don't remember anymore...

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