The 2007 Mac Census is in: 95% of Leopard users hate Stacks. They’re only good for a few files; there’s no simple one-click opening of the folder without having to hold Cmd; they aren’t hierarchal. And, frankly, whatever Stacks can do now, the old folder-in-a-dock method of Yesteryear could do too (sans the little swooshy animation thing). And there are tons more complaints, but I’m too lazy to write them all out.
In 10.4, I comfortably had my Applications folder in my Dock — click, bam: my Applications folder opened in a new Finder window. Stacks threw me off: click it and all of a sudden a small chunk of my 84 apps appeared in this crazy grid-like box of death. A. Noy. Ing.
But what’s this? A hint from our friends at Mac OS X Hints that virtually eliminates this little nuisance? No way!
Yes way, man. Yes way.
To add one-click-opens-the-folder functionality to the dock, the trick is simple: Make an alias of said folder (in my case, the Applications folder), and drag that to the right side of the Dock. Click it and pow: window opens, no stupid swooshy animation fan thingy or Cmd-clicking necessary.
Our bud Rob Griffiths adds his commentary:
Unfortunately, you will not have a pop-up navigable folder, just a folder whose icon won’t change based on its contents (I’d really like to know who came up with that “great” idea). For alternatives, I suggest taking a look at DragThing, which can do hierarchical folders in dock, along with about 3,000 other things. I also use Butler, which lets me create pop-up navigable menus of any folder or disk that I can access with a hot key.
I also use Butler. So. There ya go.
Being part of that shocked 95% that couldn't believe the Leopard Dock, I immediately started looking for a fix that would bring back the two things that were removed: hierarchical views and custom icons.
Found it, in a cool $10 shareware called A-Dock:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/17479
What's brilliant about A-Dock is that it isn't... everything. No clock, no calendar, no mp3 player, and no jet pack that they promised us back in the 4th grade Weekly Reader. It just makes a very nice Dock, and brings back hierarchical menus and custom folder icons. Plus a few other very sweet features. Not overkill. Just what the Leopard dock should've been.
Here's a screenshot of what it looks like:
http://www.howhealthworks.com/dropbox/ADock.jpg
I adore stacks, really!
Butler is 100,000,000% more efficient than Stacks. Although the Downloads stack is surprisingly handy.
I don't know if anybody read the two introductory pdf files that were stuffed on the top of the documents and downloads stacks, but they actually described a way to use stacks efficiently. I think wesg has the right idea, and it is this: stacks works like a real 'stack'-- as a temporary repository of items that you are dealing with at the moment, you pile on the files, deal with them, and then shuffle them elsewhere. 'Elsewhere' could be another folder in your hard disk somewhere, or the trash (as the intro pdf suggest). They are not designed to be 'hierarchical' or act like the start menu in Windows. Instead, they are a compact temporary working folder.
I'm another member of the purported 05% - I really like Stacks. I would be very disappointed if some future release removed the feature. Really. I've even added my Virtual Machines folder as a stack - how simple! I want to launch Linux, I click the stack then the Linux VM, voila!
I like stacks too. I too have found an efficient way of using them. Keep the top "working docs" on the top of my docs stack and the downloads is really efficient. I do understand that most of the frustration is because on top of introducing stacks they removed the "old way" of putting a folder there and having access to those docs in that order. It's a give and get world out there.
About Leopard:
1. Why do click in a Folder in the Dock (by default) does not open that folder?
in the form of fan or grid are OK. But for me that it has to be an option.
2. Command-F is not the sane as in 10.4.
Why I can not set an specific search and kept it by default? For example, in 10.4, the 99% of my searches were By Name and includes. Now in 10.5.1 I have to click on the + symbol to set that specific criteria every time I want to perform a search...
The aspect of specific icons (Apps, Docs and so on) are very similar and confusing. Maybe they need the center draw to be in color?
And make aliases is a crap. No way, dude. Come on Apple Be good!
Can you think of any other mistakes in world history made by voting?
Stacks are great.
Thank you!!!
And stacks sucks. especially the folder icon.
It worst UI 'enhancement" since the magnifying dock.
Actually, there is an easy one click way to open a stack as a folder. Just click and hold on the stack, wait for the menu to appear, then move up, highlight "Open ..." and there you go. Easy.
J\
this is what, now, 9 of 10 people who like stacks in this article thread? i think stacks are great for frequently used files and folders - the downloads folder IS really handy
i agree tho, that the dock should have the same functionality as it does in 10.4.x
I love stacks.
Just like the NeXTSTEP days, with the unfolding dock tiles.
I like the feel of the fan, but I wish there was a better way to expand on them.
My biggest dislike is the first-file icon thing - why not just have the stack take the icon of the folder it refers to.
Actually - there are a bunch of things stacks does that the context menus could not - most of them stemming from their items being dragable.
You can delete items from within the stack. (extremely useful for the downloads stack in particular)
You can move items from a stack. (and into, but you could do that before - were dock folders spring loaded in tiger?)
You can open documents in a stack in ANY application from their stack (using spotlight, if the app's not on your dock)
Stacks show what's inside them, which - for stacks' most effective uses - is very useful. (again, particularly on the downloads stack - where it also shows you the progress of your most recent download at a glance - and notifies you when it's done. But this is also useful on other stacks - such as a desktop stack, or a documents stack - to know, for instance, when you've saved something, at a glance.)
For launching apps not in your dock, there's spotlight - which is faster & easier than a context menu if you have more than a couple apps anyway...
I love the stacks fix, cause I do find that annoying. Just as an aside though,if you just want to jump to your applications folder, there is a keyboard shortcut. With Finder active (which is one more step to select if you are not in the finder) you can just : command + shift + a and your applications folder will open.
...and notifies you when it's done.
This is the feature that I like most about Stacks. Downloading something into the folder and forgetting about it until it jumps up and gets my attention. Thanks for pointing it out!
Stacks is brand new. It takes time to perfect. Its got potential to be must more useful. It would be more useful if:
-You could right click, delete, ect. the files within the stack
-You could put a stack anywhere, not restricted to the dock.