Dockapps Arrive at the OS X Dock

An anonymous reader writes "Many of us have fallen in love with the convenience of dockapps through fvwm2, Windowmaker and Afterstep. Now, it looks like dockapps are finally coming to OS X at last. It's not Dashboard, but it is very cool."

System-Friendly?

[dave1212]

The only wonder I would have is whether these cause much strain on the Dock itself. I used to run the SlashDock plugin but found my Dock would always end up using most of my processor(s).

...and Dashboard's widgets only update when you pull them into view, which is sort of lame and not at all keeping with the 'dash' idea.

Re:System-Friendly?

[Chucker23N]

"...and Dashboard's widgets only update when you pull them into view, which is sort of lame and not at all keeping with the 'dash' idea."

Not true.

Widgets /can/ enter sleep mode when the Dashboard hides (onHide{sleep;}) and then later refresh once Dashboard comes back, but they don't need to. The normal case is that a widget continuusly gets updated, whether the Dashboard is visible or not.

Furthermore, there's a somewhat hidden feature to show a particular Dashboard widget while the rest of the Dashboard is invisible, i.e. make the widget sticky.

Re:System-Friendly?

[trendyhendy]

Instructions for having a widget always visible are at Mac OS X Hints [macosxhints.com]

Re:System-Friendly?

[dave1212]

Actually, if you look at every Widget that has come out thus far, you will find that not one of them updates until you activate Dashboard. I'm running Tiger on 12 machines at work, how about you?

Re:System-Friendly?

[Chucker23N]

I'm running Tiger on not a single machine right now, being a Windows network administrator, not a Mac OS one, but I still know that Dashboard widgets can continue to run while the Dashboard is invisible.

Just edit a widget to remove the "sleep()" call from the JavaScript. Try it.

So what?

[Redshift]

Activity Monitor has been working in my dock for years, showing me my bandwidth utilisation. What's new about this?

Looks like a shameless plug from the site author for his GPL library.

Re:So what?

[wibs]

agreed. I don't see anything new that these "dock apps" offer over apps I've been using since I got OS X at 10.1.

move along, nothing to see here...

Re:So what?

[amonredotorg]

Agreed. In fact, Dockapps (usually called Docklings) are being deprecated in newer versions of Mac OS X. There were quite a few Docklings in 10.0 and 10.1 (including SlashDock), but there's very, very few Docklings left for 10.2 and later.

This article at CocoaDev [cocoadev.com] has a tutorial on making Docklings. Really easy.

Dockapps aren't exactly the same as Docklings though, it seems... they have animated icons. Doing that is very easy as well, you just call NSApplication's -setApplicationIconImage: method every second or so. I don't need a framework for that.

GNDN

[Anonymous Coward]

Dockapps/docklings haven't "arrived" -- they've been here all along. This framework just makes certain kinds slightly easier. Namely network monitors/graphs -- you know, like the Activity Monitor that comes with the OS -- the one that does exactly the same thing as the one existing app that uses this framework.

Oh, and by the way, it's GPL, so you can forget about using it in your real projects. Why not LGPL? Why not BSD? Because that might be useful!

Anybody else get the feeling that the "anonymous reader" happens to be the guy that wrote the framework? It's totally "post your homework" season, isn't it?

Re:veiled licencing bitching

[Chucker23N]

Indeed. GPL'd libraries are useless to the realistic-thinking world.

Re: *and* the bus you rode in on

[zo219]

(. . .but then, where would i find gems like this?) (and the mod system is going to hell around here. or perhaps always has been. hell.)

(as you were, gentlemen.)

I Don't Use The Dock

[Goo.cc]

Personally, I find the Dock to be a waste of screen real estate. I keep it at its smallest size, empty and hidden; I prefer to usee Quicksilver to launch applications.

Re:I Don't Use The Dock

[cowscows]

I find myself using the same files repeatedly in a number of different apps. Drag and drop onto an application's icon on the dock makes this so much easier for me. To each his own I guess. The dock isn't perfect, but it's got its uses.

For future reference

[Lally Singh]

If you're coming in from fvwm2 and get on a mac, for the love of God, don't try to make the mac more like fvwm2.

Why?

[Bastian]

I would suggest that, while there are certain times when a dockapp is a great idea in OS X (the little red dot that shows how much new mail you have in Mail.app, for instance), and certain times when it's not perfect, but it is the only thing that will really do in some cases (Activity Monitor), for the most part dockapps have no place in OS X.

In the various X11 windowmanagers that have them, they work well because they afford you a great deal of control over where the dockapp can be placed onscreen, and because they provide that degree of freedom with everything else, too.

OS X, on the other hand, gives you a menubar that is already firmly attatched to the top of the screen which already contains a clock, battery monitor, and various other useful indicators and controls. The menubar alone simultaneously makes 3/8 of the good places for random dockapps (corners and sides) off-limits, and severely reduces their usefulness by providing most of the most popular dockapp functionality in a much more compact form.
It also gives you an incredibly cramped and inflexible dock. All the user gets to control is how large its icons are, whether it is on the left, right, or bottom edge of the screen, and partial control of icons within the dock. The dock then decides where the icon's physical location on the screen is, makes adjustments to the ordering of apps by throwing new apps you run in the bottom of the first compartment (i.e., the middle), and resizes the dock as needed. And there is only one dock - no dock and clip like in WM, no whatevertheheckyouwant like in fvwm2. OS X just doesn't really leave much room for the dockapp author and its user to implement and place the dockapp's interface in such a way that it serves to be both useful and something more than ugly clutter.

While I realize there are major differences between dockapps and the "desktop widgets" model of random useful crap, I gotta say that in general it's a much better idea to buy a copy of Konfabulator or Tiger and make use of that system. Enjoy the way it allows you to put more information up there, and get used to the way it only shows that information when you want it to. (I haven't used either much, but it could be that they allow you to design widgets that "pop up" on the screen briefly when they need to tell you something right away. . . I have used other OS X apps that will do that.) In the end, the desktop widgets model just meshes much better with Aqua.

Not compatible with Tiger!

[cypherz]

It seems like it isn't compatible with Tiger. Installed but no-workee.

Re:Not compatible with Tiger!

[batobin]

Same success here. Crashes as soon as it opens. I saved a crash report [tobintv.com] for the developers.

KDE'ish like menu's in dock?

[JPyObjC Dude]

Does this mean somebody can implement kde'ish like menu's in the dock. I totally depend on a win32 version of the kde design called True Launch Bar and would love to have this on OSX.

Anybody seen such a beast or know if it's possible?

JsD

Docklings already possible & license issues

[aristotle-dude]

I don't see many developers using this framework given that it uses the GPL, a viral license. http://dockapp-osx.sourceforge.net/license.html [sourceforge.net]

I don't see this being used by larger applications given that it is possible to implement a dockling without this framework without having to comply with a viral license like the GPL.