Building Cocoa Applications: A Step by Step Guide

The Dock

The Mac OS X Dock replaces the Mac OS 9 Application menu. Always available (though it may be temporarily hidden), the Dock is designed to reduce on-screen disorder and help users organize their work. The Dock always contains the Finder icon and the Trash icon in the first and last positions, respectively, as shown in Figure 1-15. The Dock can also contain any number of additional icons that fall into four groups: running applications, minimized documents, file/folder icons, and application icons for commonly used applications (running or not) such as Mail, iTunes, and Internet Explorer. Every open application’s icon and every minimized document icon (for non-hidden applications) is in the Dock. The commonly used applications that populate the Dock are the choice of the user.

Figure 1-15. The Dock (bottom) location and appearance can be controlled via the Dock submenu

By choosing a menu command from the Dock submenu located in the Apple menu (see the top of Figure 1-15), a user can turn magnification and hiding on or off. When turned on, the magnification feature causes each icon in the Dock to enlarge when the mouse is positioned over it. When turned on, the hidden feature causes the Dock to “hide” off-screen unless the mouse is positioned over it. Users can also position the Dock as a whole at the left, right, or bottom of the screen. We prefer the Dock on the left or right ...