Panther, Red In Tooth And Claw

Interfaces change with the same co-evolutionary rhythms that ecosystems do: introduce a new species (or a new trait within an existing species) and a whole series of lateral effects unfold in other organisms, most of them difficult to predict in advance. I've been noticing one of those transformations over the past week, ever since I installed OS X Panther, and started messing around with Exposé, the highly-touted window management tool that I first raved about many months ago here.

Exposé's every bit as powerful as it promised to be (although I think Kottke has some smart ideas about making it even more powerful.) But what has surprised me in using it is that it has come very close to eliminating my need for the Dock (OS X's all purpose utility for storing icons representing open or frequently used applications, along with collapsed document windows and other basic functions.) I've always been a defender of the Dock -- for some reason, a number of interface experts find it offensive -- and have relied on it constantly ever since I moved to OS X. But Exposé (and Panther's command-tab application switching) has made it increasingly superfluous.

Because Exposé does such a brilliant job dealing with clutter, I no longer need to collapse windows into the Dock to keep things better organized; I get a much better "big picture" view of what's open right now by hitting f9 and seeing all my windows than I do by looking at the dock; I can switch applications more readily through the keyboard by hitting command-tab. I've long included the desktop as an icon in my dock, so I could get to it quickly without closing a ton of windows, but Exposé now lets me do that with by hitting f11. The only thing that the Dock still provides is access to the trash can and application launching, both of which you can do through keystrokes in any Finder window, although it's not quite as easy.

I'm not entirely ready to turn off the Dock altogether, mostly for sentimental reasons. (It's such a signature OS X element.) But I'm thinking about it. I wonder if the Dock and Exposé teams at Apple realized that the two tools would be in competition with each other. Or perhaps it's just me...

Comments

[Collin Brooke]

steven,

i haven't upgraded to panther yet, but i do use konfabulator as a dock alternative (www.konfabulator.com). and no, i've got nothing to do with it, other than the fact that it's one of the few shareware programs i've purchased for osx.

more to the point, among the widgets offered in konfabulator are a waste basket that relays to the trash folder, a schedule that syncs with iCal, some different iTunes interfaces, local weather feeds, a few different RSS feed applets, and something called Tab Launcher, which was written as an alternative (to the dock) app launcher. i've been really happy with it--konfab is set to load on startup, and i'm good to go without my dock. the only thing i still use it for is for open windows, and it sounds like i won't need it for that much longer...

cgb

[Sam Kington]

The Dock also provides status information. Currently my dock tells me a number of things:
1) I've got new mail in Entourage
2) SpamSieve has found new non-spam mail (it also flashes its dock icon when it's working)
3) NetNewsWire has 40 unread blog posts
4) iPulse tells me a whole *bunch* of stuff about my machine
5) iCal tells me the date

There could be more - Proteus isn't telling me about new messages because I don't have any, and Clutter isn't displaying the cover of the current album because it hasn't found the artwork on Amazon.

I don't think the Dock is dead. Or rather, it's not dead for me.

[Buzz Andersen]

Expose already sort of does what Kottke is suggesting--if you use command-tab in Expose mode, it will bring the subset of the currently selected application's windows to the fore.

[Abe]

competition seems like an odd choice of word. There is nothing wrong with having multiple ways for a user to accomplish something. I once met a photo professor who claimed every time he taught intro to Photoshop his students would be teaching him new ways to accomplish tasks within the first week. Its not like one tool is eliminating another, it just increases the diversity in the ecosystem.

[Steven Johnson]

Abe, I get your point about multiple ways of doing the same thing, but I do think there is an inevitable conflict between these two tools, mostly because the Dock takes up real estate on the screen (I know you can minimize that space by shrinking or hiding it, but even in its most unobtrusive it still dominates one edge of the monitor.) If it becomes increasingly superfluous to me, I'll just eventually turn it off, to free up more room. And if many Apple users do the same, then you can bet that this will have an effect on the size/funding/morale of the team working on the Dock at Apple, as what had been the flagship UI element in the OS becomes more of an afterthought...

Not saying that this will happen, of course, but that's why there's at least a possibility of competition between the two...

[brad]

Actually the new Finder, rather than Exposé, is what makes the Dock feel less useful to me. Instead of leaving my favorite applications on the Dock, I can now keep them in the lefthand pane of the Finder.

And has anyone else noticed that the Go menu now includes the Applications and Utilities folders? I used to keep those on my dock for quick access, but no longer.

The only drawback to these enhancements is that my most-frequently visited items are now scattered across three access points (Dock, Finder window, Go menu) instead of just one (the Dock).

[Richard Soderberg]

I generally keep my Dock hidden, and rarely used. Thanks to Expose, I've started using LaunchBar less -- but I was already not using the Dock.

Interestingly, the Alt-Tab menu included by the OS works around the one core problem I had with LiteSwitch X -- that the icons aren't reflective of things like "unread items", "current date", etc. Now when I hit Alt-Tab I can see that I have 2229 unread news articles, and 1 unread email, and so on.

For those of us who already left the Dock in exchange for LaunchBar, though, this isn't a new thing, and Expose radically increases the usability of the system. Lacking LaunchBar, I could still livably use my computer now, thanks to Expose; no longer is it a productivity prerequisite, but simply an enhancer.

[diseño web]

40 unread blogspots? o_O

[s.m. koppelman]

I had a chance to play with Expos today. Great feature, one of those "why didn't I think of that?" sorts of things that everyone will be using from here on out as long as we're stuck with WIMP user interfaces.

What bothered me were the keys used to get at it: F9 through F11, basically. It's not intuitive at all. I'm not sure what would be, besides adding big blobby paddles to the sides of keyboards that you could smack with one hand while you mouse with the other -- and I think it's a useful enough feature to merit that sort of thing. Or maybe foot pedals, or some kind of Bluetooth thingie that you stick on your shoulder and lets you trigger Expos actions by shrugging or something. Arbitrary F-keys or standard multi-key shortcuts strike me as arbitrary and secondary ways to get at things, and this really strikes me as a primary, front-and-center UI element.

[brad]

What bothered me were the keys used to get at it: F9 through F11, basically

But you can also set your Expose preferences to get at it by mousing to a corner of your screen. Not as cumbersome as it sounds; the only problem I've had is that sometimes I mouse over there accidentally and Exposé freaks me out by suddenly changing my screen.

To be honest I don't find Exposé useful, but I think that's because, as an inherently disorganized person, I've spent years training myself to avoid leaving a lot of windows open. When I'm done with something, I close it. Exposé feels dangerous to me, like it will lead me back to my previous cluttered, disorganized ways.

[Lolitas gratis]

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[diseño web]

muy buena

[diseño web]

muy buena

[diseño web]

Uno siempre aprende de los grandes..

[diseño web profesional]

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