WORKING WITH THE DOCK

Working with the Dock

The Dock is an important part of your desktop space. By default, it appears at the bottom of the desktop, but you can control many aspects of its appearance, where it is located, and to a great degree, how it works. The Dock is organized into two general sections. The area to the left of the application/document separation line (the white, dashed line) contains application icons. On the right side of the line, you see icons for documents, folders, minimized Finder, document, or minimized application windows, and Trash/Eject icon.

NOTE: 

When you empty the Trash, the icon returns to a more pristine state. When you select an ejectable item, such as a DVD, the Trash icon changes to the Eject symbol. You can drag a disc or other ejectable item onto the icon to eject it.

When folders appear on the Dock, they become stacks by default. When you click a stack, it pops up into a fan or appears as a grid (depending on how you can work with items are in the folder) so that you can work with items it contains. You can disable this feature for any folder so that it behaves more like a normal folder.

The Dock performs the following functions:

• ·   Shows running applications. Whenever an application is running, you see its icon on the Dock. A small glowing light is located at the bottom of every running application’s icon.
• ·    Enables you to open applications, folders, minimized windows, and documents quickly.
• ·    Enables you to quickly switch among open application and windows.

TIP:

You can use any folder as a source of desktop pictures by clicking the Add (+) button located at the bottom of the source list. Use the resulting dialog to move to and select the folder containing the images you want to use.