Annoying aspects of Leopard & possible fixes

After having messed around with Leopard for a bit I have to say that there are a few things I really dislike about it. I hope to use this post to point out those issues and hopefully come up with simple solutions that won't hog any resources to fix them.

Let me start with the first issue I have:

1. Unnoticable open application indicator in dock:

The new glass dock is nice and reflective, but the way open applications are indicated is almost invisible. That tiny blue circle is barely noticable, and unnoticable on certain backgrounds. However, thanks to my friend and the SA forums, the solution is easy. Simply change the boolean no-glass entry in the com.apple.dock.plist file located in "/Users/*your name*/Library/Preferences/" to YES, and restart your dock.
For those of you unfamiliar with Apple's preference files, just open up terminal and type the following, pressing enter after each line:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES
killall Dock

That would transform your aero like dock into:



2. Transparent menu bar:

The new menu bar in Leopard is nice and transparent and all, but if you have a dark background, the colour might bleed through and make certain items or words on the menu bar less noticeable.

There have been various fixes out there for this problem, but most of them either run in the background and eat up resources, or have bugs.

LeoColorBar however has none of that. All it requires the user to do is to select the desired colour for the menu bar, and the background image:



3. Stacks not displaying everything:

The new 'stacks' feature in OS X is all nice and fancy, but if you use it with a folder that contains a few more files, it will show them like this:


Unlike in Tiger, where you just get a nice scrollable list of ALL your files, with their FULL names:


I have yet to come up with a solution to that however.

 

So you definitely CAN'T have a normal folder instead of a "stack" in the dock anymore? that's plainly stupid.

 

Yeah, instead of keeping the old method as an option (which M$ surprisingly does very well), Apple just totally replaced it with the new one. Leopard has quite a high number of annoyances (in this release of course), for example connecting to Windows PCs has never been more difficult, and spotlight is unable to look in file names AND file contents at the same time anymore (you have to select EITHER names OR contents).

 

Ya, I must agree that the old folder in the dock, while not as pretty or flashy, seems much more useful than stacks. What does Stacks do that the folder won't?

 

That is probably an easy hack. I wouldn't expect it to take long for somebody to write a little something.

 

Why? What do search results look like? Is it not possible to fix this somewhere on the preferences?

 

I guess I'm one of the few that prefers stacks to the old way Tiger did it. I find the grid to be more responsive than the list, and I prefer looking for icons than for names.

I can see how, if the amount of files in the folder exceeds the grid capacity, how that would be bothersome, though.

I find myself flipping back and forth between the two docks. Macworld has posted two applescripts to make switching back and forth easier here.

 

Here's another issue with Stacks that I find annoying. You can't Right-Click the contents of a Stack.

For example, I have an INF in the Downloads Stack and I want to Right-Click --> Open With...TextEdit. That just doesn't work, no Right-Clicking allowed. Instead I have to use the Show in Finder button and then Right-Click the INF file.

So to get around this you need to Assign a default Application first (Get Info --> Open With) if one is not already selected. Still no Right-Clicking of the Stack contents though.

Another Right-Click issue that annoys me is with the System Preferences, and this occurs in both Tiger and Leopard. When System Preferences is already open you can Right-Click the icon on the Dock to select from whichever pane you want to. However you don't have this option when System Preferences is not open.

I love me some Right-Clicking.

 

Even more than right-clicking, no actions beyond the default is allowed at all in Stacks--such as nested folders.

A single fan of files isn't going to do anyone much good since usually, people organize by subfolders within their Documents folder or whatever.

It's true that the grid is a bit faster than the list though (which is ironic considering everything else requiring animation in Leopard is slower than Tiger--at least not as smooth).

Ah well.

So far, Leopard hasn't disappointed me only in the sense that I never expected much from it to begin with. I guess that's the plus side.

 

Yea taelrak, thats probably the main reason right now I'm not upgrading to leopard. I know its a picky thing, but it can get really annoying.

 

This is a minor annoyance, but an annoyance nevertheless:

Under the Command-Tab view, we used to be able to cycle through the application icons. Now, when you reach eg. the rightmost icon and click right, it doesn't select the leftmost icon. Why??? Is there a way to fix this, do you think?

 

Really??? SJ and the rest of the reviews have been touting Leopards much improved networking, esp with windows, its one of the reasons I want to upgrade.
Can u explain the problems in a bit more detail/
Thanks
a

 

CMD + Tab (or CMD + Shift + Tab) still scrolls over. Just don't use the arrows .

 

I don't understand why Apple force solutions and don't give options. They are so stubborn. Evertyhing need to be like Steve wants. Why don't they just leave it to users' preferences?

 

If all your computers are in 1 workgroup, it's fine. But for example, at your office, where there are multiple workgroups, Leopard will mess up. This issue has been frequently discussed in the Apple forums. For example in this thread:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1195740&tstart=165