4 ms·

If I recall correctly it didn't have a dock. Everyone seems to have settled on the dock being the best paradigm for managing open apps, and launching favorites,

If I recall correctly it didn't have a dock. Everyone seems to have settled on the dock being the best paradigm for managing open apps, and launching favorites, for most users. You might disagree, but the ux people at Apple, Microsoft, Google, Gnome, and KDE seem to think it's the best approach for the vast majority of users.

prewett 6y ago
Microsoft doesn't have a dock does it? It's not in my Windows 10 installation, which has this weird combo of Awesome Bar + lag and Start Menu. Unless maybe it's an option I'm not aware of (as I actively try to avoid time in Windows) I don't really trust GNOME and KDE to have done actual UI research. Maybe Google did, but given the Android experience, I strongly doubt it. So that leaves Apple as believing in the dock, Microsoft with their task bar thing they've had ever since Win95, and everyone else copying Apple. So it might be the settled approach, but "best" seems like it is really overselling it. It seems to me everyone beside Microsoft thinks that Apple's approach is good enough that they can't think of a better one. (Which is fine by me, I like the dock as long as it hides properly)
- throwaway8581 6y ago
  The Windows task bar these days behaves almost exactly like the Mac OS dock and has since Windows 7. The main difference is if you click on an application with multiple windows open, it pops up a window selector (tip, ctrl+click to cycle through the windows instead) instead of whatever Mac OS does (some combo of bring up the main/latest-used window of the application). You can enable the Vista and earlier behavior—listing all open windows and not grouping by application—but I imagine very few people do.
  - fomine3 6y ago
    Well. I believe Windows Taskbar is most sophisticated Dock implementation.
- wayneftw 6y ago
  The Microsoft taskbar has always had the most prominent feature of the dock: Allowing you to organize and launch apps from a bar on the left/right/bottom of your screen. Prior to Windows 7 though, you could only add shortcuts to the taskbar and when you launched an app from that shortcut a wholly separate taskbar button would appear. Starting with Windows 7, Microsoft merged the functionality of launching apps into the taskbar buttons. This way, when you "pin" an app to the taskbar and then click on the pinned item, the pinned item became the taskbar button which represented the running app. This is how the Mac dock works. I think that the only major feature of the Mac dock that Microsoft doesn't offer is "recent apps" but I could be forgetting something since I haven't used Windows for work in a while. In the end, as per usual, Microsoft lets you have it both ways. If you want a dock you can leave the taskbar configured as default (grouping taskbar buttons and collapsing them into a single button) or you can turn that off and have the original taskbar functionality. If you add something like 7+ Taskbar Tweaker you can even ungroup them, drag and drop taskbar buttons to re-organize them and enable "middle click" to close the window represented by the taskbar buttons like you would with browser tabs. When I moved my workstations/work laptop all to Manjaro/XFCE I was happily surprised to find that XFCE taskbar has all the features of 7+ Taskbar Tweaker. I don't know what XFCE's design philosophy is, but if I had to guess it's "Implement all the desirable features of Windows in a minimalist fashion and add features for power users."
ip34162 6y ago
Ubuntu MATE, which looks like GNOME 2, has option to enable dock. https://ubuntu-mate.org/features/panel/ https://ubuntu-mate.org/features/panel/ Linux Mint has a MATE flavor, so it too might have it.
bscphil 6y ago
Not Microsoft[1], not KDE[2], and not Google [3]. Gnome's "dock" is only visible when you go into the "expose" mode at the top left corner [4], making its behavior very different from an Apple style dock. To be honest I have no idea what you're talking about. The only org that has "settled" on a dock being the best paradigm is Apple, and that's simply what they've done for decades. It's hard to imagine them reconsidering their ways. Perhaps by "dock" you are referring to using an icon-based taskbar rather than one that also contains the window title? That's not what most people mean by a dock. [1] https://cdn.windowsreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/windows-10-desktop.jpg https://cdn.windowsreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/win... [2] https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.21.0/plasma-dark.webp https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.21.0/plasma-dark.we... [3] I don't think it would be fair at all to call ChromeOS's taskbar a dock. The icons are centered like a dock, but they're in a full-width bar that also contains many other buttons and indicators. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c9/A_screenshot_of_Chrome_OS_r87.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c9/A_screenshot_... [4] https://www.gnome.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/overview.png https://www.gnome.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/overview.pn...
- throwaway8581 6y ago
  Read my other comment in this thread. The Windows taskbar he almost the exact same behavior as the Mac OS dock.
  - bscphil 6y ago
    Windows invented the taskbar, so far as I know, and their initial implementation only showed the icons: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/88/Windows_1_Bar.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/88/Windows_1_Bar... The macOS dock distinguishes itself aesthetically precisely by not being a taskbar with other functions and features. Every other taskbar implementation, even the ones that use icons (an approach that predates the Apple dock), sees it as important to not waste space and provide indicators and useful widgets on the same bar. The "dock" approach is distinct in that it contains only large friendly application buttons, and doesn't use the full width of the screen. The thin taskbars common to other operating systems which also frequently use icons to switch applications shouldn't be considered docks, if for no other reason than that they predate Apple's approach. As you pointed out in your other comment, clicking on one of the icons doesn't even do the same thing in Windows as on macOS, and the task switcher part of the taskbar is the most comparable thing between taskbars and Apple's dock.

prewett 6y ago

Microsoft doesn't have a dock does it? It's not in my Windows 10 installation, which has this weird combo of Awesome Bar + lag and Start Menu. Unless maybe it's an option I'm not aware of (as I actively try to avoid time in Windows) I don't really trust GNOME and KDE to have done actual UI research. Maybe Google did, but given the Android experience, I strongly doubt it. So that leaves Apple as believing in the dock, Microsoft with their task bar thing they've had ever since Win95, and everyone else copying Apple. So it might be the settled approach, but "best" seems like it is really overselling it. It seems to me everyone beside Microsoft thinks that Apple's approach is good enough that they can't think of a better one. (Which is fine by me, I like the dock as long as it hides properly)

throwaway8581 6y ago
The Windows task bar these days behaves almost exactly like the Mac OS dock and has since Windows 7. The main difference is if you click on an application with multiple windows open, it pops up a window selector (tip, ctrl+click to cycle through the windows instead) instead of whatever Mac OS does (some combo of bring up the main/latest-used window of the application). You can enable the Vista and earlier behavior—listing all open windows and not grouping by application—but I imagine very few people do.
- fomine3 6y ago
  Well. I believe Windows Taskbar is most sophisticated Dock implementation.
wayneftw 6y ago
The Microsoft taskbar has always had the most prominent feature of the dock: Allowing you to organize and launch apps from a bar on the left/right/bottom of your screen. Prior to Windows 7 though, you could only add shortcuts to the taskbar and when you launched an app from that shortcut a wholly separate taskbar button would appear. Starting with Windows 7, Microsoft merged the functionality of launching apps into the taskbar buttons. This way, when you "pin" an app to the taskbar and then click on the pinned item, the pinned item became the taskbar button which represented the running app. This is how the Mac dock works. I think that the only major feature of the Mac dock that Microsoft doesn't offer is "recent apps" but I could be forgetting something since I haven't used Windows for work in a while. In the end, as per usual, Microsoft lets you have it both ways. If you want a dock you can leave the taskbar configured as default (grouping taskbar buttons and collapsing them into a single button) or you can turn that off and have the original taskbar functionality. If you add something like 7+ Taskbar Tweaker you can even ungroup them, drag and drop taskbar buttons to re-organize them and enable "middle click" to close the window represented by the taskbar buttons like you would with browser tabs. When I moved my workstations/work laptop all to Manjaro/XFCE I was happily surprised to find that XFCE taskbar has all the features of 7+ Taskbar Tweaker. I don't know what XFCE's design philosophy is, but if I had to guess it's "Implement all the desirable features of Windows in a minimalist fashion and add features for power users."

ip34162 6y ago

Ubuntu MATE, which looks like GNOME 2, has option to enable dock. https://ubuntu-mate.org/features/panel/ https://ubuntu-mate.org/features/panel/ Linux Mint has a MATE flavor, so it too might have it.

bscphil 6y ago

Not Microsoft[1], not KDE[2], and not Google [3]. Gnome's "dock" is only visible when you go into the "expose" mode at the top left corner [4], making its behavior very different from an Apple style dock. To be honest I have no idea what you're talking about. The only org that has "settled" on a dock being the best paradigm is Apple, and that's simply what they've done for decades. It's hard to imagine them reconsidering their ways. Perhaps by "dock" you are referring to using an icon-based taskbar rather than one that also contains the window title? That's not what most people mean by a dock. [1] https://cdn.windowsreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/windows-10-desktop.jpg https://cdn.windowsreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/win... [2] https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.21.0/plasma-dark.webp https://kde.org/announcements/plasma/5/5.21.0/plasma-dark.we... [3] I don't think it would be fair at all to call ChromeOS's taskbar a dock. The icons are centered like a dock, but they're in a full-width bar that also contains many other buttons and indicators. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c9/A_screenshot_of_Chrome_OS_r87.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c9/A_screenshot_... [4] https://www.gnome.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/overview.png https://www.gnome.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/overview.pn...

throwaway8581 6y ago
Read my other comment in this thread. The Windows taskbar he almost the exact same behavior as the Mac OS dock.
- bscphil 6y ago
  Windows invented the taskbar, so far as I know, and their initial implementation only showed the icons: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/88/Windows_1_Bar.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/88/Windows_1_Bar... The macOS dock distinguishes itself aesthetically precisely by not being a taskbar with other functions and features. Every other taskbar implementation, even the ones that use icons (an approach that predates the Apple dock), sees it as important to not waste space and provide indicators and useful widgets on the same bar. The "dock" approach is distinct in that it contains only large friendly application buttons, and doesn't use the full width of the screen. The thin taskbars common to other operating systems which also frequently use icons to switch applications shouldn't be considered docks, if for no other reason than that they predate Apple's approach. As you pointed out in your other comment, clicking on one of the icons doesn't even do the same thing in Windows as on macOS, and the task switcher part of the taskbar is the most comparable thing between taskbars and Apple's dock.