Warning Before Icon Removal

[ruffy]

Sometimes I mistakenly remove icons or names from a sidebar or dock,
my trackpad control not always being precise.

I may not even notice, nor hear, the icon "puff away in its 'smoke cloud'".

Can a WARNING, or alert message, be instituted to precede this deletion?

[benwiggy]

What OS version are you on? Since Snow Leopard, sidebar items should not move out of the window unless you hold down <Command>

[ruffy]

I own Snow Leopard (10.6.8), and my icons, on the dock, for example, can "go up in smoke" if I'm not careful.

[jsalmi]

Slow down?

[DeltaMac]

10.6 and later, the sidebar items cannot be removed, unless you hold the Command key when you do that.

In the Dock, you will need to lock the items in the dock. The Dock itself can be locked so that items and positions cannot be changed, and you can also lock the items so nothing can be removed. There's terminal commands to do this, or various third-party utilities can give you GUI access to set those. Blacktree's Secrets will certainly let you do that. http://code.google.com/p/blacktree-secrets/

[ruffy]

Thanks DeltaMac.

Can you tell me how to lock the dock with the OS system?
I checked Dock preferences and - surprisingly - this lock
feature is absent.

Thanks again.

[NaOH]

As DeltaMac said, you can lock the Dock using third-party GUI applications or using Terminal commands. These are no user-facing options from Apple, so there's no Dock preferences settings for these. For using the Terminal, Mac OS X Daily (among others) detailed the commands:

http://osxdaily.com/2010/02/08/lock-...ck-in-mac-os-x

[DeltaMac]

My opinion is that Apple has decided that the Dock is meant to be a dynamic device (always usable and modifiable), which presents the user with that usefulness, along with easy changing of icon locations, and removing all but essential icons. Every user will have a different idea about what 'essential' means, so Apple basically leaves modification wide open. No warnings needed for icon removal, because no permanent change is made when an icon is removed from the Dock. No apps or documents "live" in the dock, it's just a bunch of "shortcuts"...

[NaOH]

Quote: Originally Posted by DeltaMac My opinion is that Apple has decided that the Dock is meant to be a dynamic device (always usable and modifiable), which presents the user with that usefulness, along with easy changing of icon locations, and removing all but essential icons. Every user will have a different idea about what 'essential' means, so Apple basically leaves modification wide open. No warnings needed for icon removal, because no permanent change is made when an icon is removed from the Dock. No apps or documents "live" in the dock, it's just a bunch of "shortcuts"...

I think that's a fair assessment of how Apple has treated/viewed the Dock. I'd add, though, that I don't think the Dock as a bunch of shortcuts is obvious to a large number of people. I get this sense from a few things, namely how many friends and family have contacted me when they inadvertently removed a Dock item and want to restore it, and how most people don't really understand that there's an Applications folder. As an added complication, people don't seem to view dragging items to the Dock as how to reconcile the Dock as shortcut repository and the contents of the Applications folder.

I don't use the Dock, never have, but it always seemed odd to me that there wasn't a File > Add To Dock item in the Finder, not to mention such an option when right clicking an application icon. But even those wouldn't be obvious to many folks. And it seems like Apple understood this when they included automatically adding Mac App Store downloads to the Dock (not to mention Launchpad, though I have no sense of how widely it's used).

[DeltaMac]

And, there's the other method for adding items to the Dock.
Launch the app, then right-click on the Dock icon for that app, and choose "Keep in Dock"

I do understand your lament about how some folks don't understand that there's an actual Applications folder. I find it's not difficult to walk most folks into that over the phone.
I do have one friend, in particular, who still doesn't 'get it', even though I get calls from her a couple of times a month, and it's usually for something very close to this thread.

[ruffy]

I always knew the dock was a composite of shortcuts, but the inconvenience of having to remember the names of occasionally used programs - whose icons I recognize, to fetch them back when mistakingly I delete them, is troublesome.

A simple "Lock now" & "Unlock now" in Dock Preferences, you'd think, would be rather user-friendly.

[NaOH]

Quote: Originally Posted by DeltaMac And, there's the other method for adding items to the Dock. Launch the app, then right-click on the Dock icon for that app, and choose "Keep in Dock"

Yep, I forgot that one before. But I think this again demonstrates how Apple didn't really make it obvious. I mean, lots of people don't know about /Applications or Spotlight or Apple Menu > Recent Items, so the launching part is difficult. And isn't right click (whether on an Apple mouse or with a two-finger tap on a trackpad) disabled by default? Sure, there's Control-Click, but that seems like another one most people don't know.

Quote: Originally Posted by DeltaMac I do understand your lament about how some folks don't understand that there's an actual Applications folder. I find it's not difficult to walk most folks into that over the phone. I do have one friend, in particular, who still doesn't 'get it', even though I get calls from her a couple of times a month, and it's usually for something very close to this thread.

I also have no problem explaining to others how to get to the Applications folder. You seem to have a better batch of people contacting you for help. I'd estimate I've got about 30 friends and family, all of whom have used me for a number of years now (ages 16-90), and I think concepts like this one have stuck for maybe 3 of them.

Certainly, in defense of Apple, on some deep level they recognized how much of this stuff perplexes people. They clearly thought through a lot of these issues with the iPad. And besides being a (relatively) new approach to computing, wrapping it in a (relatively) new form factor probably helped. People seem more receptive to new ideas when they come in new packaging. (For that reason, I'll be curious to see how average folks respond to Windows 8.)

Quote: Originally Posted by ruffy A simple "Lock now" & "Unlock now" in Dock Preferences, you'd think, would be rather user-friendly.

This is essentially what most people think for the feature they could individually use having. The hard part if you're in the position of a company like Apple is determining which of those potential options would serve the overwhelming majority of users.