24 Hours of Leopard: Stacks

I personally don't like this concept of stacks. Here are a few reasons:

First, why are stacks folders? If you put a folder in your dock,clicking on it should open the folder. Rather than stacks being folders, stacks should be created by dragging individual files into the dock. Then, you could drag plop additional files onto the first. The files could be aliases. This would simulate what real-life stacks would be like.

Second, at the very least, there should be a "View in Finder" option alongside the always view as fan and always view as grid options.

Thirdly, why, it the stack is empty, does it open in finder? To keep consistency, a message should appear when you click on the stack signifying that it's empty.

Fourthly, Apple should put the hierarchical view back as an option.

These are just a few comments on, in my opinion, the most flawed new feature in Leopard.

Stacks is growing on me. I had been using the hierarchal dock folders in Tiger but my biggest complaint with that was the lag to display the list when many files/folders were inside it. Stacks gives the same function but faster.

Regarding the question of getting a constant icon to represent the Stack, I used a little trick (see a more detailed tutorial on my blog, linked below) of creating a folder and naming it a space character then giving it a custom icon. You have to "Sort by Name" but it solves the icon problem and since there's no name on it, you don't mistake it for a file of interest. I use the Fan setting for "Documents" and "Downloads" folders and Grid for my "~/Applications" and "Utilities" folders to help differentiate files and apps.

Tutorial link:
http://arlof.com/blog/2007/leopard-stacks-constant-icon/

Ok guys, here is the deal with Stacks. It's pretty lame implementation of it. Here is why:

#1 - I can't create a "stack" in the dock and then just drop any application I want in there. For example, I would like to have a "Video Editing" stack and drop Final Cut Pro, Compressor and SoundTrack Pro, but you can't do that. Yes, you can create a folder (which I have done) calling it "Video Editing" and then drop aliases to the applications in there and then drop the folder into the dock, but that is way too much work. (Windows supports this)

#2 - You can't have folders inside the stacks that expand like the stack does. Yes. You can have a folder, but when you click on it, it opens it up in finder. Not good. (Windows supports this)

#3 - You can't sort the applications inside the stacks exactly how you want to display them. Yes, you can sort them by date and/or by name, but I want to sort them in the order I want. Yes. You can use the trick of numbering each alias and that will sort appropriately, but that's not good. (Windows supports this)

#4 - You can't select what the image of the stack is going to be to represent that stack. This would be a nice feature to have (Windows does not support this).

#5 - I hate the "Show In Finder" at the top most item. I wish there was an option to remove this.

Let's not lie to each other here. Please don't drink the Apple Kool Aid. Let's really think this through. Don't get me wrong, I love the Mac and prefer it over my Windows machine, however, Windows had this functionality since Windows 2000 (or 98?). I love the way the stacks open up in Leopard, but it's not perfect and they need to improve on this functionality to make it really a worthwhile solution. Otherwise, it's just eye candy that its not that useful.

Just my 2 cents. I know I will get hate email for ragging on Apple, but what the heck. I welcome it.

Cheers!
- Marcelo
The Digital Media Dude
http://www.thedigitalmediadude.com

I seriously hope they allow us to disable Stacks in an update - I installed Leopard the night it came out and this is easily the worst thing about the new OS IMO.

Folders that have a ton of stuff in them like Applications look absolutely ridiculous this way and I hate having to click, move the cursor to the top and then click again in order to just get a finder view of a folder that's in my dock. Why in the heck didn't they make this optional and still maintain the single click to get a finder view Tiger-style method?

Haven't actually tried Stacks yet so I won't comment on their functionality but based on the screenshot here the text curving with the icons is visually disconcerting, wanting me to unnaturally tilt my head a bit to the right to read it more comfortably. And if the text were horizontal then the contrast with the leaning icons would probably seem goofy, too.

The idea of Stacks is reasonable to me and I'll probably find use for them even though the current implementation seems weak.

A very well-earned shareware payment for whomever can figure out how to disable stacks. Since 10.1, I've always had my Applications, Documents, and Recent Server folders living down in the dock, where a simple right click was able to bring up the white background menu with all of the contents, effectively working in the same way. Oh, and I hate how you can't assign a static icon to a stack - having a whole bunch of icons layered over each other, especially with different shapes, transparencies, drop shadows - it's a mess. This is my only real complaint with Leopard so far...

I agree with Brian -- the stacks feature doesn't remove clutter, it adds it. I hate the look of the fan, the grid, the illegible and unchangeable "stack" of icons -- it's a mess. The feature is either a gift for third party developers as an opportunity to create control panels that allow non-stacking folders or some kind of veiled attempt at sabotage -- putting such an ugly feature right in front of every user with no option of turning it on or off. Ugh!

I've been using Leopard about a day now. The stacks can die in a fire.

I like that I can put the folder in the dock and have quick access to anything in there with a click. What I hate is that I can not right click to get a normal looking menu that holds all the items in the folder or can not click it to open in finder without pressing the command button.

It's a good idea, reminiscent of windows taskbar folder option, but this should be optional and able to be turned off. Love Leopard so far but stacks suck!

The only good desktop is a naked desktop. Stacks, FTW!

I quite disagree with Brian. I like this new behaviour. More precisely, I was a bit upset about installing DragThing because I'd only use a few of the features - I just need few groups of folders another group with some docs, etc. Stacks seems to be a good solution in that case. Yes, I'll have to create some folder with aliases or maybe some smart folders but the setup is easy and useful for my needs.