Dock Inconsistencies - Stacks

From your brief description it is hard to understand exactly what you are talking about.

Are you removing applications from the Dock & seeing them remain there, even after the puff of smoke animation? Are you trying to remove the application from the Dock or delete the application itself from the file system?

Likewise, what are you trying to do by deleting an icon from a stack? A stack is a shortcut to a folder in the file system, so if you move something from it to the trash, you are moving the actual item to the trash. Is this what you want to do? Does it not work?

What I said was stacks are shortcuts to folders, not that the items in stacks are shortcuts to anything.

The two sides of the Dock, divided by the dotted line, are for different purposes. The application side only shows shortcuts to applications, & will not accept folders or anything else.

The other side of the Dock shows shortcuts to any items you want to put there, including shortcuts to folders (stacks) as well as to individual items. You can remove the shortcut without affecting the item it represents, but not the contents of stacks, which actually are the items in the folder.

How could it work otherwise? What would removing an item from a stack accomplish if it weren't removed from the folder it represents?

If you drag an application into the "My Applications" folder, you are moving the application itself into that folder. The same is true if you move an application out of that folder. This applies to stacks as well, since they are shortcuts to the actual folder.

In general, it is not a good idea to move any application out of the /Applications/ folder at the root of your startup volume since many applications do not work as expected if placed elsewhere. Instead, create aliases to them & put those into a "My Applications" type folder, which you can then add as a stack to the Dock.

But remember that if you move any item from a stack, you are moving the item itself, so if you move it to the Trash, that's where it will be. The alias approach is handy not only because it avoids moving applications but also because you can easily create new ones or delete existing ones without affecting the item it represents.

Hey Pagemakers,

I think there is a work-around for this using Smart Folders, although I've never done it. Will someone with experience with the SF chime in on this?

Theoretically, you can make a smart folder with all of your applications you want in a stack, put it in the stack area of the dock, and then add and delete applications at will - because a Smart Folder is an alias, just like the icons on the dock.

Am I right?

CMF

I don't do this through smart folders, but through aliases of the apps in stacks. I create an alias of each app, then remove the alias from the name, though the little arrow remains, then I put the app in my stack. When I decide it doesn't belong there, I delete it, which deletes only the alias, not the app, which remains in my Applications folder.

A "Smart Folder" is actually not a folder but instead a saved search. You can't add or remove items to or from smart folders -- you can only change the search criteria, which changes what they display.

Since a saved search is a single item containing only search criteria & not a folder containing files, when you put it in the Dock, it behaves just like any other single item in the Dock -- clicking on it opens it in its "parent" application, in this case the Finder. IOW, the result is a Finder window opens in 'find' mode showing the search results, not a stack springing out of the Dock.

I realize all this can be confusing to a new user or anyone else with little historic perspective of how the OS developed, but it actually does make sense from a usability perspective.

The Dock is a multi-function UI element that provides visual indication of which apps are open, convenient access to opening documents via dragging & dropping them on an app of your choice, ready access to your choice of apps that aren't running, various app-dependent options via the contextual menu that pops up from each application in the Dock, all in the applications section of the Dock. The other section is for shortcuts to your choice of items & where minimized windows appear.

The behavior of each Dock item is determined by its type & capabilities. An app is a fundamentally different thing from a document, a folder, or a saved search; it would be extremely confusing & unnecessarily restrict usability if the Dock treated each the same just because they each have a Dock representation!