This Mac tip is provided by Mark Greentree and was originally posted on Mark’s blog – Everyday Mac Support. For more of Mark’s tips visit his site, follow him on Twitter, or browse his archive of posts here.
How To: Dock System Preferences For Mac OS X Lion
Today, we will be exploring in the Dock System Preferences as highlighted below:
Upon selecting you will be presented with the following view of the preferences:
Users can change the size of the dock from small to large by sliding the control bar to ether end. You can see a visual difference between the small and large options in the image comparison below:
There are limitations to the maximum size you can make the dock and that will be dependent on how many applications you have in the dock. The more applications you have in the dock the smaller you dock will appear.
Magnification is turned off by default in Mac OS X Lion. Should your dock be rather small as presented in the image comparison above then magnification may assist in allowing you to select the correct application to suit your requirement. As with size simply slide the control bar from left to right to either minimise the effect or maximise the effect of magnification. An example of how Magnification is presented can be seen below:
As you can see from the image above the application which you have your mouse pointer floating over will be the one magnified the most whilst all other applications are slightly minimised until a few down the line are not changed at all.
Position On Screen: This area simple allows you to have your dock sit on the left or right hand sides of your display rather than at the bottom. A view of the Dock on the left hand side of your display can be seen below:
As you can see the dock is slightly different but all functionality remains the same.
Minimise Windows Using: There are two visual effects Apple uses when minimising windows.
The genie effect will looks literally like a genie is going into a bottle. The bottle being an application.
The second option which is the Scale Effect will simply decrease the window in a square shape towards the dock icon.
Minimise Windows Into Application Icon: By default this option is turned off. When you minimise a window from any application with the preference in this position the window will be added to the right hand side of the dock next to the Trash.
When this is turned on the window you have just minimised, will be minimised to that of the specific application. Hence, when you click on the application the window will instantly re-appear. Should you have more than one window minimised into the same application then clicking the application icon will only reproduce only one of the windows. Should you wish to access the others which are minimised in the application you can always click and hold or right click the application icon to bring up a list of windows to select which are minimised.
Animate Opening Applications: By default this option is switched on and relates directly to that little bounce that all applications have upon launching from the dock. In order to stop the bounce simply deselect this option.
Automatically Hide And Show The Dock: Is switched off by default therefore showing the dock at all times in the position you have chosen it to be in. Turning this on will allow the dock to hide and then only become visible when you move the mouse over the area where the dock resides.
Show Indicator Lights For Open Applications: In my example this is switched on. If you don’t wish to see the visual lights underneath open applications then simply deselect. The difference between the options can be seen below:
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