Hi all and welcome again to another weekly Tech Tip from the folks at Blog.WD. This week I’m going to show you how to put your Dock back the way it was in OS X 10.4, using the new Mac OS X Update 10.5.2.

In Mac OS X 10.4, dropping a folder into the dock (on the right side of the divider) showed one icon which you could customize the look of simply by changing the folders icon. Right-clicking on this folder would bring up a list view of the folders content with the ability to traverse down into sub-directories.

In OS X 10.5, dropping a folder into the dock results in a “Stack” which at first-glance looks very cool, but after using them for a short while their limitations become all too clear. No ability to traverse sub-directories, no ability to customize the look of the stack; the first three icons in the folder are what you see… No exceptions. This can be particularly frustrating if you have added the applications folder to your dock as often times installing a new program will change the look of the Stack completely, making it harder to recognize next time.

Luckily for us, Apple has seen the error in their ways and has offered users the opportunity to change the functionality of their dock back to the way it was in OS X 10.4. First, head up to your ‘Apple Menu’ then down to ‘Software Update’. This will check for the latest software updates available from Apple and so long as you have OS X 10.5 or later this update will show up and be a recommended install.

After installing this update, and of course restarting your computer, mouse down to your Stacks and right click on any of them to bring up the newly improved contextual menu. As you can see below, 2 new items have been added to the options… List View and Folder Display Mode. To emulate the functionality of 10.4 we’ll enable both of these new options. You stacks should now look like folders again, and clicking on any of them brings up a nice, plain list view menu with the ability to traverse into sub-directories.

Smartly, Apple has left each Stack customizable, so you may have traditional list folders amongst new-age fanned stacks amongst hybrids of both.

Thanks for stopping in again, we hope this weeks tech tip has been informative or at least entertaining. See you all again next time, on Blog.WD

I was a bartender in a past life and have found many excellent bar and drink resources online over the years, but few as complete as shot-cocktail-recipe.com.  As their name suggests they have recipes for all walks of drinks, from cocktail recipes to shots to martinis and more.

Stop by, have a cocktail, submit a unique drink and win an iPod Touch, but enter quick cause the contest ends soon.

iPod Touch Contest Info