05 7058 ch03 5/9/05 3:51 PM Page 45 CHAPTER 3 Exploring the Dock Along one edge of your screen (the bottom, left, or right) is a colorful row of icons known as the Dock. The Dock, shown in its default state in Figure 3.1, acts as a taskbar to show open applications and minimized or reduced versions of a document window. It also offers quick access to favorite applications, shows feedback from open applications, and provides a resting place for the Trash. FIGURE 3.1 The Dock is useful for organizing your desktop. Here’s a fast overview of the Dock’s arrangement: . Left (or Top) portion—At left (or top) are icons for applications. The ones you’ve opened have a triangle under or next to them. Right (or Bottom) portion—At right (or bottom) are document icons representing the documents you’ve reduced or minimized. 05 7058 ch03 5/9/05 3:51 PM Page 46 46 CHAPTER 3: Exploring the Dock By the Remember: To minimize a document, you can click the yellow (center) button at Way the top left of each window. You can also minimize by double-clicking the window’s title bar if you’ve checked that option under the Appearance settings of the System Preferences. Trash—At the extreme right (or bottom) is the Trash, the place to drag files that you want to throw away. By the You can also drag URLs into the right (or bottom) side of the Dock. A single click Way launches your default Web browser and opens it to the saved address. Separator bar—The separator bar splits the Dock into the application and file/folder areas. To make the icons in the Dock larger or smaller, click the separator bar and then By the Way move the mouse up to increase the size or down to reduce it if positioned horizon- tally, or move it left and right if your Dock is positioned vertically. Applications and the Dock The left (or top) portion of the Dock contains all docked and currently running applications. To launch an application whose icon is in the Dock, just click its icon once, and your computer takes it from there. When you launch an application that isn’t in the Dock, its icon then appears in the Dock. As the application launches, you’ll see the icon bounce. When opened, a small tri- angle appears with its icon to show that it is running—as you can see with the first icon on the left in Figure 3.1. When you quit or close the application, the triangle disappears. (For applications that haven’t been set to remain in the Dock, the icon also disappears from the Dock.) To switch between active applications, just click the icon in the Dock that you want to become the active application. You can also switch between open applications by holding down Command-Tab. This moves you through active applications in the Dock in the order in which they appear. When you reach the item you want to bring to the front, release the keys to select it. 05 7058 ch03 5/9/05 3:51 PM Page 47 Applications and the Dock 47 Dropping is a shortcut for opening document files in a specific application. To drop By the a file, you can drag and drop a document icon on top of the icon of the application Way in which you want it to open. In Mac OS X, you can use the application’s Dock icon instead of having to locate the original application file on your hard drive. Also, to force a docked application to accept a dropped document that it doesn’t recognize, hold down Command-Option when holding the document over the appli- cation icon. The application icon is immediately highlighted, enabling you to per- form your drag-and-drop action. (Keep in mind, however, that many applications can work with files in only certain formats—forcing an application to open some- thing it doesn’t have the capacity to read won’t get you very far!) Adding and Removing Docked Applications You can add applications to the left side (or top) of the Dock to create a quick launching point, no matter where the software is located on your hard drive. Dragging an application icon to the Dock adds it to that location in the Dock. When the Dock expands to the full width of the screen, it automatically decreases By the the scale of its icons to fit along the edge of your screen. As you open more appli- Way cations or add more icons to it, each icon appears smaller. To make an open application a permanent member of the Dock, simply do the fol- lowing: 1. Locate the application’s icon if it appears in the Dock. (If it’s not in the Dock, the application isn’t open!) 2. Click and hold on the icon to pop up a menu, as shown in Figure 3.2. 3. Choose the option Keep in Dock. (If the application already has a place in the Dock, you won’t be given this option.) After you’ve placed an application on the Dock, you can launch it by single-clicking the icon. Moving an icon to the Dock doesn’t change the location of the original file or fold- By the er. The Dock icon is merely an alias to the real file. Unfortunately, if the original Way files for a docked application have been moved since it was added to the Dock, the Dock can no longer launch that application. To remove an application’s icon from the Dock, make sure that the application isn’t running and drag it out of the Dock. It disappears in a puff of smoke (try it and see). 05 7058 ch03 5/9/05 3:51 PM Page 48 48 CHAPTER 3: Exploring the Dock FIGURE 3.2 Click and hold on an applica- tion’s icon in the dock. Getting Information from the Dock In addition to providing easy access to commonly used applications, the Dock also gives you feedback about the functioning of applications through their icons. The icon of an application that’s opening bounces in the Dock (unless configured not to) and continues bouncing until the software is ready. Also, if an open application needs to get your attention, its icon bounces intermittently until you interact with it. The Dock also signals which applications are running by displaying a small trian- gle, or arrow, with their application icons. This is a good way to see which applica- tions are open, even if you’ve hidden them or closed all their windows. In addition to telling you which applications are open, Dock icons can also give you a convenient way to close applications. Simply click and hold the icon of an open application and choose Quit from the menu that appears. Dock icons also offer quick access to documents open in an application. For exam- ple, when you have multiple Finder windows open, you can view a list of those win- dows by clicking and holding on the Finder icon in the Dock. From the list, as shown in Figure 3.3, you can easily choose the one you want. Did you Some applications, such as System Preferences and Sherlock, take “Dock menu- Know? ing” even further. If they are open, you can choose from among all their sections, whether those sections are open or not, by click-holding on their icons in the Dock. 05 7058 ch03 5/9/05 3:51 PM Page 49 Applications and the Dock 49 FIGURE 3.3 Click and hold on the Dock icon of an open application for a list of open win- dows. Some applications even have customized Dock’s icons to display information about events occurring in the application itself. For example, the Mail program displays the number of unread email messages in a red seal that appears in the icon in the Dock, as shown in Figure 3.4. (Mail is covered in detail in Chapter 17, “Using Mail.”) FIGURE 3.4 View the Number of Unread Messages on Your Mail Icon in the Dock. 05 7058 ch03 5/9/05 3:51 PM Page 50 50 CHAPTER 3: Exploring the Dock Docked Windows, Files, and Folders Now, let’s talk about the right, or bottom, portion of the Dock. You can drag com- monly used documents to this area of the Dock, and a link to them is stored for easy access, as shown in Figure 3.5. You can also drag commonly used folders to this portion of the Dock. Click-holding (or right-clicking) a docked folder displays a list of its contents and the contents of the subfolders in that folder, as shown in Figure 3.6. Minimized application windows are also placed in this portion of the Dock. They are labeled with the icon for their associated application for easy identification, as shown in Figure 3.7. FIGURE 3.5 Add an impor- tant document to the Dock. FIGURE 3.6 View the con- tents of docked folders with ease! FIGURE 3.7 Temporarily store your work- in-progress in the Dock. In addition to reducing desktop clutter, these window miniatures can serve another useful purpose. Depending on the application, minimized windows might continue to update as their associated applications attempt to display new information. QuickTime Player and DVD Player, for example, continue to play movies. Trash Can Another important resident of the Dock is the Trash (see Figure 3.8).