open applictions not showing in dock

I am seeing this on my system also. Would appreciate if someone with knowledge of the workings of these features can suggest some things to troubleshoot.

This could be a plist corruption problem, but I'm not sure.
Sometimes, the preference list files get corrupted. You can usually just remove them and they'll get re-created. This may require you to reset certain settings. A notable exception to this is the Mail plist which actually stores the Library structure of your email accounts. Deleting the Mail plist will definitely cause lots of problems, but is recoverable.

The plist files are stored in the /Users/username/Library/Preferences/ folder. They usually have the naming convention of com.company.programname.plist.
A simple troubleshooting technique is to move a suspect plist file out of the Preferences folder and start up the app, again. It will re-create the plist from scratch.

In your case, I would try the com.apple.dock.plist. You can use Activity Monitor to kill the Dock app and it will restart. Or, you can log out and log back in.

There is a new file with Leopard called com.apple.dock.db. I haven't figured out what it does, but you might try moving it out. If anything gets worse, you can move the old file back in replacing the newly created one.

This all sound somewhat odd, so I don't know if this will help.

I am having the same problem described. I usually never turn my computer off but I'm finding I have to reboot every day to fix the dock issue. Programs are running but not showing in the dock or task switcher.

John, you could use Terminal or Activity Monitor to just kill the dock instead of restarting. It will automatically restart once killed.
I really think there is a problem with a plist or that Dock.db file. I can't confirm because both my systems work fine. In addition to the ones mentioned above, there is com.apple.dockfixup.plist in the /Library/Preferences folder. It seems to manage the changes you've made to the dock from the default.

Another troubleshooting technique is to create a new user and see if the behavior occurs in that user. If it does, it is a system-wide issue vs. a user-level issue.

I had the same issues of running apps either not showing up in the dock at all, or running apps not showing the little dot that tells you they are active.

I removed these two files from my user library/preferences folder :
com.apple.dock.db
com.apple.dock.plist

After a restart it appears the dock is working as it should....for now anyway.

Man, wish I had stuck with Tiger. May go back one day as I really feel removing the Classic environment sucked big time.

Removing those 2 files...

com.apple.dock.db
com.apple.dock.plist

...and restarting seemed to work for me - Thanks.

This has been happening to me, too. I'm not crazy about doing the preference removal (unless it's absolutely necessary). I also haven't yet done the forensics to figure out the cause, but I've checked a couple of other boards and came up with this reasonably simple fix:

(1) open Terminal (it's in /Applications/Utilities/)
(2) when you get your prompt, type in "killall Dock" (don't type the quotes)

The dock will disappear, then come back. When it does, you'll now see "Terminal" in the dock, with its requisite dot underneath and you'll see "Terminal" in the application switcher, too. You can now quit the Terminal, and get back to your normal work (or stay in Terminal if that's your normal work 😉 ).

Hope this helps,

Herb

I've found that simply restarting the Dock seems to get it working again. I've not needed to remove or wipe the com.apple.dock.db or com.apple.dock.plist files.

I never had this problem before 10.5.

Relaunching the finder from "Force Quit Applications" also appears to work, but this is obviously a bug that needs to be addressed.