Can I hack the size setting of Dock (~1 pixel x 1 pixel)?
 

I am running without the Dock and prefer it that way. The only thing I miss is the ability to windowshade a window to get it out of my way--the existing Windowshade hack depends on the Dock in order to function.

I was reading David Pogue's book OS X The Missing Manual and he described an ability to dynamically resize the Dock as small or as large as you want. Turns out that isn't true (it won't go any smaller than the Preference Pane's slider's smallest end) but it got me to thinking: if there's a file somewhere that contains a digit, and knew where it was kept and could hack it to a smaller numeral than the slider will go to, I could run the Dock but so small that I'd never accidentally get my cursor hovering over it (and with magnification off, who'd care anyway?). Then I could use its existence as a running process to let me use the Windowshade hack.

Anyone know if this is possible?

search for com.apple.dock.plist.
That file contains a bunch of dock settings. I have no idea which one might be minimum size.
*warning* editing the file could kill your dock, i'm sure, so if you want to play with it, be forewarned.

The value you're looking for is "tilesize"

In PropertyListEditor, I've set mine to be "12" - just slightly smaller than the smallest default size.

You can also set a good few things in this plist, but again be careful - if you start mucking about with "Persistent Apps" you could munge your dock!

Very nice! Dock running at a tilesize of 1 is acceptably nonintrusive, I think. I'll run it for awhile like that. If it bugs me I'll just kill it again.

Thanks!

Damn! I forgot about the Command-Tab application switching!

:mad:


I don't suppose there's any easy way of disabling app switching or modifying the keystroke that does it?


I found this thread about disabling the dock, which suggests swapping in another app by giving it the same name and location as the Dock. I tried that with X-Assist though, and while on the one hand it didn't pay attention to Command-Tab [good], it also did not activate the disabled "minimize" buttons [bad].

The application used in the hint above was DragThing, not X-Assist, but I can't imagine why one would function where another would not. (I could download a demo copy of DragThing, I suppose, but I gather that DragThing wants to put some kind of launcher on my screen, which would make it as undesirable as the Dock itself).

Good god, I just want a Windowshade feature, not an app switcher, not a process launcher, and not a Windows Start Menu Task Bar wannabe.

HA!!!

The settings in WindowShade X allow for the user to specify a behavior for double-clicking a window's title bar, and the behavior specified for that setting works even without the Dock!

OK, I'm happy! Dock: banished once again. WindowShade: working! Command-Tab: used by FileMaker and Adobe, and not by stupid uppity system process. Yay!