Re: What Ails the Short Story, Mr. S. King in the
What is this thread doing in the Mac section?
Let's talk the 10.5 Leopard Dock
The New Dock in Mac OS X Leopard
It's therefore notable that Leopard sports an entirely new Dock appearance, which now presents its icons as three dimensional objects sitting on a translucent glass shelf, rather than flat objects stuck in a translucent ribbon of icon flypaper. Dock icons now cast a reflection on the Dock (as do other windows on the screen, and even the background image), as well as casting a shadow behind them. The combination of the reflection and the shadow contribute to their dimensional appearance.
Mac OS X Leopard Dock
The black triangle denoting running applications has been replaced with a more subtle indicator which looks like a glowing blue LED. It's nearly invisible unless you look for it, at which point it is quite obvious. The reflections, shadows, curving texture, indicator lights, and translucency all add up to a new sort of Dock that aspires to show off the user-selected background and add visual interest; one might also complain that it looks busy. I found the new Dock both familiar and fresh. It only looks wrong when you obsess over its details. Once you start looking for reasons to be irritated, you can certainly find all sorts of things that are objectionable; the harder you strain on its details, the more irritating they are. Fortunately, I don't have time to get upset about which way a shadow falls, so I can't complain about nausea and vertigo as some have.
Along with Leopard's translucent menu bar, the new Dock has been a sore spot for users who don't like change; there were similar complaints when Apple changed from the mess of various launchers, switchers, and window minimizers of the Classic Mac OS to using the Dock. Apple has been open to making some changes in response to feedback; it toned down the translucency of the menu bar in recent builds, and made the separator between Dock apps and its Shelf items to the right (it is invisible in the images Apple depicts in its Leopard preview website, such as the image above) more prominent in new builds of the Leopard Dock (A new 'highway stripe' separates the Dock's applications from files, folders, and minimized windows in the image below). Apple didn't go so far as to do away with the new dimensional Dock entirely, however.
Mac OS X Leopard Dock
The biggest complaints have been that icons in the new Dock sometimes appear to cast multiple shadows (since many icons already include a shadow), and that it looks silly when used on either side of the screen vertically; that's because the more dimensional icons appear to hang in space next to the Dock, rather than seeming to rest on it or float above it as they do in its default bottom position. Of course, if it bothers you that the Docks' icons float in space with no physical structure holding them up when it is positioned vertically, how did you ever survive the logical conundrum of desktop icons floating in space against the Mac desktop, as they have for decades? The other problem inherent with a vertical Dock is that the wide screens of Apple's laptops, iMacs, and other displays can't physically fit in as many icons in a vertical Dock compared to a Dock in the default position along the bottom.
