Mac 101: Dealing with the Dock
As we began this grand adventure, I devoted the second installment to those things you spied on the Finder desktop after you’d started your Mac. One of those items was the Dock—the bar at the bottom of your Mac’s screen where you launch applications, access currently running applications, and tuck away items that you want quick access to. This week I’d like to delve a bit deeper into what you can do with the Dock.
By way of refresher, the left side of the Dock is devoted to applications—programs that Apple placed there, applications you’ve dragged there, and programs you’ve launched. The right side of the Dock (the area that appears after the divider) is for folders, files, minimized windows, and the Trash.
The items in the Dock are aliases of the original items, meaning that when you click the Safari icon to launch the browser, for example, you’re really clicking an icon that represents Safari rather than the true-blue Safari application itself. Because it's an alias you can safely remove it from the Dock by dragging it to the desktop without fear of deleting the original. Note, however, that you can’t drag the icon of an active application to the desktop in the hope that you’ll remove its icon from the Dock. You must first quit the application; once you do, you can remove it.
Hover your pointer over a Dock item, and you’ll see its name appear. Click and hold on a Dock item, and you’ll find options appropriate for it. For example, if you click and hold on the System Preferences icon, a list containing all your system preferences will appear, making it easier to go directly to the preference you wish to access. Click and hold on the iTunes icon once you've launched that program, and you get options for playing music in your iTunes library. Hold down the Option key while clicking and holding on an active application in the Dock, and you have the ability to force-quit the application.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
http://www.macworld.com/article/2018708/mac-101-dealing-with-the-dock.html
