My dashboard, 6 September 2007

mhm, how much do the ALA people get?

Wolfr - I thought Jeffrey's comment was funny, so I went to see your desktop and its awfulness. Turns out I like it better than his and all its unnecessary heavy-handedness. However, you can't convince me that having two apps in your dock is better than having say, your five to seven most used. Typing makes less sense than moving your right hand a bit, no?

Also - where can I get me some of that hardwood?

I agree with Jeffrey. I would kill myself if I had to look at Wofr's desktop every day. For god sakes, man, at least add some color. That grey black wood thing is soul sucking. But, Jeffrey loves his; Wofr's loves his. To Each His Own.

@robertjosiah: The wallpaper is named "Hardwood with Lights" I think:
davidlanger.de/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/hardwood_lights...

I actually don't even use this wood wallpaper, I use a dark grey as a background. I don't look at my desktop, I work in applications.

The point is, my focus is on the apps, not on the desktop and a bunch of icons.

@Robertjosiah: maybe you 5 most used make sense, but most mac users tend to drag 20 apps in there which is ridiculous... I don't have any default apps in my dock. (besides finder obviously).

The reason for this is: I might sit at my macbook and play WoW, then I only need WoW. I might go casual surfing, then I only need Safari/Camino/whatever. If I'm working there's about eight apps open - but when I'm not, I only need a few.

The only thing thats in my dock is quicksilver, since you cant force quit stuff that isnt in the dock and every once in a while it hangs.

Btw dark wood is here: zygat3r.deviantart.com/art/Dark-Wood-58266349

Wolfr, I like your dark wood desktop. But it needs to be more minimalist. I'd get rid of the 5 icons top right. And maybe even the dock itself.

I am not a big dashboard user, but I do have these thingys:

I can run everything through Quicksilver, but I can't do everything (like moving files around) as fast without a drag and drop gui. If I were able to type everything 100% correctly (and fast!)and if I knew the filenames of all my files I could do that.

You can take it a step further and live in your terminal but that's another story.

I live in a tepee. Jeffrey love that desktop. I wouldn't change a thing.

Wolfr... different strokes for different folks. I did steal your desktop image, though.

I have the lavalamp widget, too.

Here's a screenshot of my XP desktop with Tiges styles and a couple of widgets. Just to show that windows users have the power to spend to much time tweaking our UI as well...

Also posted a comment on the original blog post with more links and info. Though it isn't available yet, so I'm guessing it's stuck in a queue awaiting moderation...

[Edit:] Here's a screen with more widgets examples...

I am absolutely with Wolfr. The only things in my dock are open apps, and the desktop is pretty much clutter free. Once you've started using Quicksilver (3+ years for me) it's hard to stop. I mean, you can't beat typing "Ctrl-Space, ps, return" and opening photoshop. Literally 0.5 seconds to do - and no superfluous icon always hanging around reminding me the program is in my Apps folder.

@Wolfr: You said "The only thing thats in my dock is quicksilver, since you cant force quit stuff that isnt in the dock and every once in a while it hangs." There is a script out there for terminal called Quickkill that will reset QS if it hangs. So now you can make QS utterly and totally transparent itself.

As to my dashboard, it's pretty much empty except for some Mint widgets.

I can't be bothered remembering keystrokes.

masuga72: "no superfluous icon always hanging around reminding me the program is in my Apps folder."

I wouldn't say the icon is superfluous as you can drag and drop to it. Also it shows any progress bars running when images are being processed by filters etc.

Some icons also show a screenshot of the actual program running, like Parallels Desktop. So you can watch the Windows XP screensaver doing its business (if you like).

Other icons, of course, react when something is happening, like an update finished. Or the email client which shows the number of new messages.

Hey, maybe icons are worth showing after all!

@Wolfr - the trouble with QS is that you need to remember what an app's called. To me that's too much effort and reliance on keystrokes (I use a lot of different apps).

@masuga72 - Many icons aren't superfluous - download speed, server changes, flagged items, news items, new mails etc.

Each to their own - I use Butler. Every app is available with a single click in a drop-menu, grouped by task. I don't have to halt my flow - my mind's prompted by the icon, which I find really intuitive (faster and more productive than QS). And it's scriptable.

I love the look of those DragThing docks, will have to check that out.

If you use an app enough, you should really know what it's called.

Hell, if you paid over a hundred dollars for a piece of software, you better know you bought. Not knowing what your apps are called is just being very, very lazy.

Besides you can run ifconfig and svn update and all kinds of neat stuff directly through QS.

@Masuga: thanks for the tip, I'll check it out

Another thing I wanted to mention: knowing whether an app is open or not is not clear enough in osx10.4, and it's even worse in leopard. So if you dont put any apps in your dock you got a handy overview of whats actually open without the need to hit alt tab.

@Wolfr - you rather missed the point. It wasn't about knowing or not knowing the name of an app per se - it was about what makes for a more intuitive workflow, negating mundane tasks like recalling the name of some obscure little app when you're trying to focus on something more creative.

Curious that you should need reminding which apps you have open, I've never found that to be an issue.

I need to know so I know what I can close, after a few hours there's too many apps open and I need to close some to keep clutter away from me.

I'll try Butler.