Make Leopard's 3D dock even more distinguishable than it already is

Jun 26, 2008 21:10 GMT  ·  By

We can all agree Leopard's dock is already a cool feature of the OS we've all grown to love so much. But why not make it a bit more personal?

For this we're going to need an application like Michael Aubigny's SuperDocker (BlockSoft has a similar app up for grabs, simply called Docker).

As soon as you're done downloading the free app, double click the SuperDocker DMG file to install it. After copying it to your Applications folder, get the disk image and DMG file out of the way so you can focus on SuperDocker. Minimize some of your windows, if you will.

As the screenshot above shows, SuperDocker sports a very intuitive UI. Every option to manipulate your Dock's appearance is there. There are also options for "messing around" with your stacks, Finder, Safari and Time Machine and their respective preferences, all from the same program.

Customizing your dock is super-easy using SuperDocker. Just choose Dock in the toolbar and start playing with the options. You can have a 3D or a 2D dock (a real treat for long-time Leopard users), set icons to be transparent or not, set their alignment and much more. But the real dock-customizing goodness comes with the Graphic Styles you can choose for your dock. I personally dig the Coffee Table motif, but there are a total of 28 styles to choose from, including cloud, grass, ice, iPhone, leather, paper and even a Super Mario Bros.-themed dock look. Here are some of the ones I considered cool enough to show off.

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If you're the kind of person that keeps everything in the dock, an additional separator would be in order. SuperDocker can offer one. The application creates an invisible icon and places it on your dock to act as a separator. You can choose where to place it (Applications Zone or Documents Zone) and if you're not satisfied with where your new separator is placed, simply right click it and select "remove from dock." You can also do it the Mac-way and just drag-it out for it to whoosh itself into nonexistence. You can even assign your original separator a style as well. I used the Finish Line for our example. Check it out!

You will notice there's a small question mark to the left of every option. Click it and SuperDocker will tell you exactly what it's going to do, should you want to tweak that setting up. As far as Finder preferences go, using SuperDocker you can select the tipping timelap between two spaces, display timelap of dialog boxes, or show hidden files. Time Machine settings include displaying a message when a new disk is plugged in, or set the timelap between two backup sessions, while Safari users can activate forcing new windows to open in tabs, turn on the develop menu and switch on the WebInspector. Lastly, if by any chance you get a little too imaginative with your tweaks and mess up some of your settings, the Restoration tab can help you restore the original settings for the Dock, stacks, Finder, Safari, Time Machine and more.

HERE's SuperDocker. Have fun!

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