Customise My Applications Folder - Xserve

[jimbob1989]

Hi all,

 

I am customising the dock for users on the mac network using Workgroup Manager and have selected to display the My Applications folder.

How can I choose to make the applications folder visible as a folder and not a stack as it is now?

 

Another quick question about the My Applications folder, how do you customise what is displayed in there?

 

Thanks!

[AntonioRocco]

Hi

 

If you select the Preference Manifest and select the Dock Policy you should be able to view the relevant keys. Or if you like the Policy. You can either edit the appropriate key or add a new one in the relevant area after applying an appropriate integer value.

 

Look for the persistent-others key. If it's there you should see a series of items. There should be an equivalent number of them depending on how many folders you've defined for the right hand side of the Dock. This part of the Dock is divided from the rest of the Dock by a line that looks a little like the white lines down the middle of a road. Except they're horizontal.

 

If you click the disclosure triangle by the side of Item 1 - for example - you should see a tile-data entry. Again click on the disclosure triangle and you should see further keys. One of them should say displayas. The integer value for a grid would be 0. For a stack it would be 1. Alter as the value as seem appropriate to you and test. If you don't see anything like this then you should be able to add a key by selecting the New Key button. This is quite involved as you're adding keys to keys. Although if you're having to do this then there's something not quite right somewhere?

 

Assuming I've understood you correctly customising My Applications should be fairly straightforward. Think of it as a symlink that 'points' itself to the top level Applications folder. You may not know this but you can create an Applications folder in the local admin's Home folder. Use the terminal command "mv" to move applications you don't want Users to have access to from the top level Applications folder to the newly created Applications folder in the local admin's home folder.

 

Using this method you're achieving two things. You're controlling what other users -who are not the local admin - have access to and yet you're still allowing the local admin access to those applications. This is especially useful for applications such as Terminal, Console, Network Utility etc.

 

IMO the above is actually a better way of managing access to applications rather than using WorkGroup Manager. This aspect of WorkGroup Manager I find slightly disappointing.

 

If you have ARD - assuming all the workstations have the same local admin account - you can use the "mkdir" command to create the Applications folder in the relevant area as well as using the "mv" command afterwards. You can easily do this for all your workstations. Yet another approach would be to create your netboot image with those changes having already been made.

 

Antonio Rocco (ACSA)

[jimbob1989]

Hi, thanks a lot for your reply!

 

I don't have the persistent-others key in the dock policy. Is this because I haven't actually set folders to be a part of the dock and instead just ticked to add the network home and my applications in the dock items view of the dock preferences? How would I go about creating this key/adjusting the policy to add the integer values?

 

Thanks again for your help!