Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Leopard dock tip

I am sick of the dock on Mac OS X Leopard not being able to make folders open with a simple click, like sanity demands and like it used to be. It's just embarrassingly poor usability to change very useful and logical behavior and not even leave the old behavior as an option.

A bit of research found no solutions short of messing with code, which I don't like to do.

I found out that command-click opens the folder which contains the folder in the dock. I wonder who asked for that?

But I asked myself: how about if I placed a file from the folder in the dock and command-click that?
Voila! That actually opens the folder the item is in.

Update: I got irritated about this after a folder got so large that even in List view it does not fit on my monitor, so the "open in finder" command normally seen at the bottom is not visible until I have scrolled all the way down...
In the Fan view, the command is at the top, so I have to move the cursor all the way up...
In the Grid view it's close by the cursor, but it's so graphical that it not instant, even on a Mac Pro.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

There were some changes made in 10.5.2 that fixed this. Right click on a folder in the dock. Pick "View Content as List." While you are there, might as well pick "Display as Folder."

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

It's better, but it still not a simple click.

Anonymous said...

You are right. Another option is to control-click, slide down to the bottom menu item which is "Open (name of folder)" and click on it.

Anonymous said...

I would respond more elequently to this but just Im busy easily opening folders on my PC. :)

(Hated macs ever since we were forced to use them in college. That's before the whole MAC vs. PC thing became a 'thing'.)

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

Me, I'm just PO'd that my rudderflapping Windows keeps changing the viewing settings of my various guddurn folders, ALL THE TIME. It doesn't matter WHICH Windows system, because apparently they all frakkin' do the same blundertapping thing. Some machines are intrinsically evil, I tell you...

Some days, it just makes me wanna mouth off, y'know? I mean, how basic can a thing be, and why is it that the more basic, the harder it seems to get right?

I'm fondly caressing (or scarcely fondling?) the project of a Linux computer, but in Lebanon I'm not sure whether it's insanely difficult to find, or officially impossible.
Anything over which no member of the Government can expect to make payoff/quota money, you can expect to be outlawed. And there's no percentage to be made on a free OS.
Scrooge them tyrannical rubberduckers. Systemic corruption AMMGABRO. Worse than a Viagra OD. They're actually CONSIDERING passing a law to allow a UN-funded wind farm project aimed at helping us solve the chronic electricity shortage. (That is, if you dare call a measly 33 years "chronic"!)

("Mom? Did I pass the censorship check?")

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

"Some days, it just makes me wanna mouth off, y'know? I mean, how basic can a thing be, and why is it that the more basic, the harder it seems to get right?"

I second that, a million times.

(I'we kiw you! I'we kiw you a miwion times!)

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

Quoting Elmer Fudd? Wow, that's cool.
I mean, it takes a huge pair. Most people will only ever dare quote tall manly heroic types, to make them look/sound similar.
Like, "Biwions of bwistewing bawnacwes! CAWCUWUS!!!"

I used to have a cowege teachew, she would elmerise nearly all Ls and Rs. My friend once whispered to me: "She's got a hot potato in her mouth!"
I still have a great time reading my notes from her hematology classes. They're laden with phonetic transcriptions of the way she pronounced "red blood cells originate from erythroblasts, while white blood cells are from leucoblasts". Twy to pwonounce it thwee times fast in hew mannew, if you bewieve you'we capabwe! And twy not to waugh.

EWYTHWOBWASTS! BWAHAAAAHAHAHAHAAAAA! LMAO!

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Actually it was Milton Berle, but close enough.

Bob Sander-Cederlof said...

Create an Alias to the desktop, and drop it onto the desktop. Then put that alias into the dock, instead of the desktop itself. Then when you click on the desktop-alias in the dock, the Finder window for the enclosing folder, which is the desktop, opens!

Anonymous said...

Bob Sander-Cederlof beat me to it.

Just put aliases in the dock and it's just one click to open it.