. Setting Up the Dock Apple starts the Dock off with a few icons it thinks you'll enjoy: Dashboard, QuickTime Player, iTunes, iChat, Mail, the Safari Web browser, and so on. | . Setting Up the Dock Apple starts the Dock off with a few icons it thinks you ll enjoy Dashboard QuickTime Player iTunes iChat Mail the Safari Web browser and so on. But using your Mac without putting your own favorite icons in the Dock is like buying an expensive suit and turning down the free alteration service. At the first opportunity you should make the Dock your own. The concept of the Dock is simple Any icon you drag onto it Figure 4-1 is installed there as a button. You can even drag an open window onto the Dock a Microsoft Word document you re editing say using its proxy icon Section as a handle. A single click not a double-click opens the corresponding icon. In other words the Dock is an ideal parking lot for the icons of disks folders documents programs and Internet bookmarks that you access frequently. Tip You can install batches of icons onto the Dock all at once just drag them as a group. That s something you can t do with the other parking places for favorite icons like the Sidebar and the Finder toolbar. Figure 4-1. To add an icon to the Dock simply drag it there. You haven t moved the original file when you release the mouse it remains where it was. You ve just installed a pointer like a Macintosh alias or Windows shortcut. Here are a few aspects of the Dock that may throw you at first It has two sides. See the whitish dotted line running down the Dock That s the divider Figure 4-1 . Everything on the left side is an application a program. Everything else goes on the right side files documents folders disks and minimized windows. It s important to understand this division. If you try to drag an application to the right of the line for example Mac OS X teasingly refuses to accept it. Even aliases observe that distinction. Aliases of applications can go only on the left side and vice versa. Its icon names are hidden. To see the name of a Dock icon point to it without clicking. You ll see the name appear above the icon. When you re trying to
