How to fix the Leopard GUI ugliness (dock, menubar, stacks)
Filed under Apple, Software on November 11th, 2007
Well, since Apple’s UI team seems to be in ruins (or on cheap acid capsules), someone has to step up and fix the bloody mess that they have created.
Make the Leopard Dock 2D
For the Terminal-fearing types there is a simple application that lets you switch between 2D and 3D look. It’s called 2DOrNot2D and it’s freeware (though, donations are appreciated).
If you don’t mind using the Terminal, just type the following line into it:
defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES; killall Dock
The dock will be restarted automatically with a standard 2D look (albeit with an ugly gray line around the edges, why Apple, why?).
If you’d rather have the 3D dock look, there is a plethora of alternative 3D designs for the dock, from a piano look (reminiscent of the 80’s piano neckties) to a yellow cheese background (complete with holes in it).
Get rid of the hideous transparent menubar
I’ll give some credit to Apple: with the right desktop picture, the transparent menubar is a little easier on the eyes than a full white one. However, the same effect could be easily achieved with a toned-down menubar, and it would work with every desktop background.
There are several ways to fix the transparent menubar. You can try using a desktop picture of a solid color. That would hide the more hideous form of transparency (background patterns leaking through the menubar), but of course the desktop color would still show through.
Another way is to make a special desktop picture with a solid white stripe where the menubar is (you’ll have to make it 21 pixels tall, here are some instructions). You can even paint the stripe in various shades of gray to tone the menubar down, or even give it a special hue.
As a third option, there is an application that fixes the menubar automatically. Get it from here.
Fix those annoying stacks
Last, but not least, a brilliant fix for the “Download Stack” feature. The problem was that it shows as a Dock icon the icon of the latest downloaded file with the rest of the downloaded file icons behind it. Meaning that the frontmost icon changes all the time: now it’s a document icon., not it’s an application icon, now it looks like a zip archive. What was Apple thinking?
You could add an icon that you like in there and change it’s modification date to the far future . That would work, but it doesn’t look very good with all the other downloaded items icons showing behind it. Except if you use a special icon designed to look nice when over-imposed above other icons, that is.
That’s what some clever guys in Japan did. The solution is a set of folder icons that overlays an image in front of all the other icons in your stack. You have to manually set it’s date to be in distant future. Check it in action on this site, where you can also download an archive with several different stack icons for various folders.
It’s such a simple and great idea that Apple should integrate it in a future OS X revision (and compensate those guys well). Anyway, it’s better that Apple’s own implementation of the Stakcs icon.
Miscellanea
Apple straightened up the rounded corners of your screen in Leopard. If you like the old rounded look, you can use the Displaperture app to restore it.
There is also an application called Cage Fighter to remove the pill shaped buttons from Mail.app, though it doesn’t seem to be updated for Leopard. I’ve got used to them, personally. Use at your own risk.
November 13th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
Isn’t there any way to close those hideous window sidebars? I haven’s seen any mention of this. Surely people can’t like having every window with a hideous Vista-like sidebar.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:19 am
What do you mean by sidebars?
Side panels like in the Finder and Mail? Well, it depends on the application. Generally you can adjust their size (up to a point) by dragging them.
On Mail you can select View -> Hide Mailboxes to close the sidebar.
On Finder (and most other applications) you can click on the pill shaped button on the top right to trim the window, by loosing the sidebar, toolbar and other superfluous stuff.
I’m not aware of any other way to turn Finder’s sidebar off.
November 14th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
You can get rid of the “ugly grey line” around the edge of the 2D dock by navigating inside the dock.app file and deleting the following files from the Resources folder inside it:
bottom1.png
bottom2.png
bottom3.png
bottom4.png
bottom5.png
then restart the dock, empty your trash, and restart your dock again.
November 15th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
[...] a recent post titled “How to fix the Leopard GUI ugliness (dock, menubar, stacks)” I wrote about turning your Leopard Dock to a 2D one, and complained about the white edges [...]
November 15th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
This is so funny:
“The problem was that it shows as a Dock icon the icon of the latest downloaded file with the rest of the downloaded file icons behind it. Meaning that the frontmost icon changes all the time: now it’s a document icon., not it’s an application icon, now it looks like a zip archive. What was Apple thinking?”
That’s exactly how it’s supposed to behave - that way you can see what you downloaded last - The stacks are by far my favorite organizational tool in Leopard and have made files on the desktop a thing of the past…
We’re using special stacks on all the public iMacs at my University to give users all kinds of great features without having them dig through any folders.
November 15th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
That’s exactly how it’s supposed to behave - that way you can see what you downloaded last -
I know that that’s the way it’s supposed to behave. I only happen to think it’s ill thought (and I’m not the only one).
For one, it destroys the identifiability of your Stacks. The ever changing top-most icon makes identifying the download stack among your other dock icons difficult, and makes different stacks difficult or impossible to tell apart (without opening them or hovering to read their title). Good luck trying to differentiate between the Downloads and Documents stack.
Furthermore, superimposing the icons from several different downloaded files behind the latest one, looks butt ugly.
The “overlay icon” solution keeps the “latest downloaded file is on top” behavior (which you like), but also helps you visually differentiate between different stacks by looking at the lower half of the icon (the overlay).
The ideal solution would be for Apple to incorporate something like this (perhaps a badge?) to Stacks. Then we wouldn’t have to resort to hacks like these, adding a useless folder in our stacks and sorting them by modified date just to get a top-most icon overlay.
November 21st, 2007 at 3:42 pm
[...] I have previously posted a collection of tips about fixing the Leopard ugliness (you know, the 3D dock, the Stacks and the transparent menubar). [...]
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