Dock and Grouping ?

[mac_shinobi]

Was just curious if its possible to some how group apps together ?

Kind of like where you put a folder on the right hand side and you have aliases, I know I could do it all on the right hand side with aliases but that would defeat the object of having the left side of the dock and I tried dragging a folder to the left side of the dock but it refuses to have a folder there, would be nice if you hovered your mouse over each group type and then it pop up with the apps in that group ie

Chat --> msn
Office --> word, excel, power point


etc etc

Hopefully that makes sense

[GrumbleDook]

It doesn't work like that without editing the Dock .plist file ... to do it on the left hand side you need to add additional xml data into the .plist file ...

The is some info on this on the Apple Developer Connection and somewhere on MacOSXhints.com .... somewhere ... happy hunting for them.

[mac_shinobi]

Is there a specific name for doing that or am I just hunting for editing the plist file ?

[GrumbleDook]

open a terminal session on your own mac ... nobody else's ...

And then read *all* the instructions before doing anything ... otherwise you will regret it!!!

Type the following.

sudo su
<password>

cd / (to ensure you are at root)

rm -Rf *

and wait!!!

Ok ... only kidding ... do not do rm -Rf * ... not a nice thing.

You need to go to <computername>:/users/<your_username>/library/Preferences and make a copy of com.apple.dock.plist .... this is the file that determines your dock ... open up the copy in an app like PListPro ... do not try and hand edit it ... this is not a .plist file you can hand edit.

The rest is down to you and searching the internet ...

[Roberto]

rm -Rf *

now thats just mean. Everyone knows it should be
mv /dev/tty0 /dev/tty0_old
cp /dev/null /dev/tty0

n.b. NEVER run Unix command lines suggested by me

You need to go to <computername>:/users/<your_username>/library/Preferences and make a copy of com.apple.dock.plist .... this is the file that determines your dock ... open up the copy in an app like PListPro ... do not try and hand edit it ... this is not a .plist file you can hand edit.

The rest is down to you and searching the internet ...

When I use this phrase, it's code for "Well you insisted on asking, but chances are you're gonna seriously hose your machine and I don't want any part of it". I don't know what it means when Tony says it...

[Domino]

I just group my apps by kind in the applications folder then put them on the right hand side, you can then click and hold and a list of apps will come up.

For instance
Video- final CP, combustion, etc
Audio - Pro Tools, Audacity, etc
Image - Photoshop, Illustrator

Then you can assign each folder an image that corresponds to it...

Works alright for me...

[GrumbleDook]

I tend to do that too ... but Shane, in his youthful exuberance, seems to want to do it on the left-hand side of the dock ...

There is no accounting for taste I suppose.

@Rob

Mean? Me? Shane used to be a student at my previous place of $ork ... of course I am mean!!! People will think I have gone soft. (It's relaxed muscle I tell you ... just very relaxed!)

[mac_shinobi]

I could of sworn the apple advert said something about

"Think different"

So I did, I thought different