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The New Dock

Killa Aaron

Killa Aaron

macrumors 6502
Nov 14, 2011
306
244
Chicago
More Dock Analysis

In Mountain Lion the dock is broken up into two layers

1. The top layer reflects the icons on the dock only with a sort of gaussian blur, the indicators and dock separator is also part of this top layer.
2. The bottom layer reflects the wallpaper you chose, the moving of windows and videos like before also with blur to it. The frontline is also part of the bottom layer.

This was different on the 3D Dock in Leopard up to DP3 of Mountain Lion where the dock would reflect everything based on the transparency of the scurve png images.


Top Layer
170353205.png

Bottom layer: With Antelope Canyon wall from Mountain Lion DP4 (12A239)
447430946.png

Bottom layer: With Andromeda Galaxy wall from Lion
783873921.png


The Top Layer is just an overlay on the bottom layer of the dock and does not show the color of the wallpaper for your desktop.

I have uploaded the dock files here for lion users since many requested.
 
Last edited:
3

3282868

macrumors 603
Jan 8, 2009
5,281
0
I noticed this yesterday.

I always changed my dock to a black glass, as this allows me to see what app's are open better than the silver dock with bright/light blue indicators. I never understood why Apple used a silver dock with those indicators.

I tried to changed the dock in DP4, only to notice all the aforementioned comments as well as the names using @2x.png which are exactly what iOS uses for its files. Interesting.

Sucks that the four scurve png's are gone, have to research what files need to be modded to get the black dock.
 
chriscrk

chriscrk

macrumors 6502a
Nov 14, 2011
524
1,069
Planet Earth (?)
I love it so much! It looks REALLY beautiful, especially when you have that ice blue screen saver seen in the Retina MBP. They complement each other really nicely.

But yeah, I like it so much more than the other dock. The older dock had these pixels on the sides that were really ugly. It looked bad. This one looks much smoother.

:apple:
 
jnl1211

jnl1211

macrumors 6502
Jan 29, 2011
330
0
NWIndiana
I set this as my wallpaper before dev preview 4. I almost **** when I saw the dock change and how bad ass it looked!!
 

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PurrBall

PurrBall

macrumors 65816
Oct 25, 2007
1,015
54
Indianapolis
Honestly, I'm not much of a fan of the huge shadow behind the dock. It gets in the way of webpages, Photoshop windows etc that are placed down there.
 
mrchinchilla

mrchinchilla

macrumors 6502
Mar 6, 2009
478
164
What is up with that shadow?! I have very mixed feelings about this new dock. As long as they dial down the distance of that OTT shadowing it'll be fine.
 
J

jackeill

macrumors member
May 2, 2010
38
0
Could someone with developer account report this shadow thing? Dock is cool itself, but shadow looks cheap...? Does it affect windows when they are nearby? How does it look when dock is on the sides?
 
haravikk

haravikk

macrumors 65832
May 1, 2005
1,501
21
Not sure about the shadow, but I use my Dock with hiding turned on. If it is being software drawn rather than built from images then I'd be interested to know how responsive it is when you've got hiding and magnification on with a good number of icons say… 30 or so?

Renzatic said:
MS is killing off Aero on the desktop for Windows 8. They're going all Metro, all the time.
Click to expand...
And in doing so they've managed to leap-frog Apple and somehow land on an overly simplified UI that, while probably okay for a tablet, is just awful for desktop users as even when you're running as much as possible in desktop mode it's a nightmare of poor usability. They've really hit upon a truly unique mess with this one.
Not even sure I'd want to use it on a tablet as you're ultimately still using the mess that is Windows underlying system on a device where simplicity and efficiency should reign supreme. While I'm not a big fan of OS X's iOS trend, Mountain Lion is still very much a desktop OS, just with some features that aren't quite as desktop friendly as they ought to be.

Anyway, that's a bit of an aside! I like the new Dock, but I do really hope that that shadow is an option, as it'd be awful for users with an always open Dock. Most people I know use it with hiding turned on, but some people prefer it always being to hand.
 
Killa Aaron

Killa Aaron

macrumors 6502
Nov 14, 2011
306
244
Chicago
haravikk said:
Not sure about the shadow, but I use my Dock with hiding turned on. If it is being software drawn rather than built from images then I'd be interested to know how responsive it is when you've got hiding and magnification on with a good number of icons say… 30 or so?


And in doing so they've managed to leap-frog Apple and somehow land on an overly simplified UI that, while probably okay for a tablet, is just awful for desktop users as even when you're running as much as possible in desktop mode it's a nightmare of poor usability. They've really hit upon a truly unique mess with this one.
Not even sure I'd want to use it on a tablet as you're ultimately still using the mess that is Windows underlying system on a device where simplicity and efficiency should reign supreme. While I'm not a big fan of OS X's iOS trend, Mountain Lion is still very much a desktop OS, just with some features that aren't quite as desktop friendly as they ought to be.

Anyway, that's a bit of an aside! I like the new Dock, but I do really hope that that shadow is an option, as it'd be awful for users with an always open Dock. Most people I know use it with hiding turned on, but some people prefer it always being to hand.
Click to expand...

made a clip for ya http://f.cl.ly/items/070s2f13210O1Y2N3A3f/DP4%20dock%20hiding.mov
 
Renzatic

Renzatic

Suspended
Aug 3, 2011
9,561
10,118
Gramps, what the hell am I paying you for?
haravikk said:
And in doing so they've managed to leap-frog Apple and somehow land on an overly simplified UI that, while probably okay for a tablet, is just awful for desktop users as even when you're running as much as possible in desktop mode it's a nightmare of poor usability. They've really hit upon a truly unique mess with this one.
Not even sure I'd want to use it on a tablet as you're ultimately still using the mess that is Windows underlying system on a device where simplicity and efficiency should reign supreme. While I'm not a big fan of OS X's iOS trend, Mountain Lion is still very much a desktop OS, just with some features that aren't quite as desktop friendly as they ought to be.
Click to expand...

What? You mean the new UI that's basically the same as it's always been, just looks a little different? I've been using Windows 8 since the consumer preview, and while there was a bit of an adjustment period (I hated it when I first fired it up), I ended up actually preferring the new Metro start menu over the old pop up style once I used it for a week. I did a fairly big writeup on why it's better than most people are giving it credit for, and why it's hardly the end of the world it's made out to be down in the Windows on Mac forum. Considering this is the ML boards, that'd be the better place to discuss it if you want to join me for some hardcore Nerd Arguments over it.
 
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