Filed under: Mac 101
Mac 101: Mimic Stacks in Tiger
Here's a simple trick that will let you approximate Leopard's "Stacks" feature in Tiger (without all the cool eye candy, of course).Lifehacker suggests moving your documents folder, a download folder, etc. into the dock. Then right click that folder (or Control-click or simply click and hold...whichever you prefer) to see that folder's contents.
That's fine, but if you want to get fancy, create a smart folder to live in your dock. I made one to mimic Steve's collection of recent images:
- From the Finder's "File" menu, select "New Smart Folder"
- Set the criteria to be "Created = Today" and "Kind = Images"
- Give your folder a descriptive name (like "Today's Images"), save it and drag it into the dock!
Yes, this only the most modest approximation of the most superficial functionality of stacks, but it's the best we have until October.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Daniel D said 12:44PM on 6-12-2007
Very nice, 3 months is a long enough amount of time to make me try this out heh.
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Jesse Gillespie said 12:51PM on 6-12-2007
System-wide input managers require a warning, but they can be installed for individual users with just user privileges. It wouldn't be too hard to have a warning for that too though...
Personally, I'm a little bummed to see spellchecker and textpander, two apps I rely on a lot, may not be possible in Leopard...
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Jesse Gillespie said 12:52PM on 6-12-2007
Wow, I guess 1Passwd's autosubmit feature still works in Safari 3...
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Jesse Gillespie said 12:56PM on 6-12-2007
Er, I guess form autosubmit for 1Passwd still works in Safari 3...
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Johnny said 12:58PM on 6-12-2007
I've been doing 'stacks' since the beginning of OS X when I put my applications folder on the dock to act as my 'Apple Menu Items'. The difference is, I'm not sure if you will be able to have sub-stacks which makes it more limited although prettier.
I tend to keep things organized so I really don't have any need for smart folders (or even spotlight very often). However, due to OS X's inability for many apps to be found if not directly in the '/Applications' folder, I might need it to group apps eventually. Damn, I'm 'old school'.
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Mephistophelian said 1:06PM on 6-12-2007
Is there a way to get rid of the hard drive off the the desktop and put it in the dock only?
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macsterdam said 1:26PM on 6-12-2007
And for those wishing they had Quick Look now, I suggest you have a look at MacGizmo (Apple probably got the idea from him!)
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Benjamin said 1:35PM on 6-12-2007
Mephistophelian--sure there is! Just go to your Desktop, drag the hard disk icon over to the Dock, then open Finder's preferences window (Cmd-,) and un-tick Hard disks from the General tab.
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Pete said 5:05PM on 6-12-2007
I keep my Applications folder in my Dock. I hate it -- if it's been a while since last use, it takes several seconds of disk churning before the menu appears. I trust that won't happen with the new system.
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pangelav said 6:05PM on 6-12-2007
When I moved the downloads folder (already heavily used) from my desktop to the right side of the dock, it worked for a little while. Then I removed it from the desktop, and when I went to folder on the dock there's a big "?" mark there and NOTHING. So where did my downloads folder go? I used finder and QS to try and locate it but nothing.
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Halopend@gmail.com said 8:29PM on 6-12-2007
To pangelav, all dragging to the dock does is create a shortcut, if you move or delete the original file, the shortcut no longer works. I'm not sure which situation you are in but if you simply movied it, spotlight should find it unless you buried it in the system files.
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Galley said 10:55AM on 6-13-2007
There's always Overflow if you want a floating launcher.
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Greg Scown said 12:54PM on 6-13-2007
Jesse - We here at SmileOnMyMac produce TextExpander, and we definitely plan to have a version available which runs on Leopard.
TextExpander is not an input method, so any changes to those will not affect us.
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attvcks said 9:56AM on 6-18-2007
Why not use spotlight to call up application instead of putting the Application folder in the dock? It less clutter and more actuate!
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