This is for all you Mac users on DPChallenge!
Sometimes I get bored of the plain, gray, stupid old mac dock, and I kinda want a new one. This is a great way to customize your mac, it's very easy to do, and you are at little risk of hurting any critical system files. That's why I wrote this tutorial.
WARNING: Do not do this unless you are a Apple Mac OSX LEOPARD user. If not this can screw stuff up.
If you are an Apple user, your dock looks like this:
With this tutorial you can change it to look like almost anything you want. Check it out:
1. First some important info. The Mac dock is made up of 8 files in the folder on your mac of "/System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/" In this folder are the following files: Indicator_large.png, indicator_medium.png, indicator_small.png (these are the indicators to show what applications are open that are in the dock), scurve-l.png, scurve-m.png, scurve-sm.png, scurve-lx.png (these control the dock itself), and separator.png (this controls what the dock looks like.) These are all image files that the Mac system uses to display the dock. So if they are deleted, all 8 of them, then your dock is invisible. This makes it difficult to see what applications are open, however, you can also change the appearance of these items but keep the names the same and the dock will look different.
2. First, for safety, you'll want to download this application so you don't have to go in and change system files yourself. That can be a bit risky. All this app does is replace ONLY those 8 system files with the files of your choice so you don't have to risk hurting any other system files. Download this and put it on your desktop.
3. Next you'll need some dock graphics. You can grab these off leopard docks website right here, or if you're photoshop savey, you can make your own by editing those 8 .png files. For the sake of this tutorial, I'm going to download the "revamped" dock style from leopard docks to my desktop. Download it here.. Un-zip the revamped.zip file to get a folder called "Revamped Dock By Daniel Cakici". Inside this folder are 7 of the 8 files that control the dock. (excluding separator.png because this dock uses the original separator)
4. Now, open the LeopardDocks application you downloaded in step 2. When the app opens, you'll notice you can choose a directory that holds the new "revamped" dock files, or you can revert to the original dock anytime. First, make sure "Choose Folder" is selected and has a blue dot in it, and then hit "browse" and find the folder "Revamped Dock by Daniel Cakici" and choose it. The path of that folder will now appear next to the "browse" button. Next, simply hit "change my dock!" and the files from the "revamped" folder are placed into "/System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/". The dock will automatically disappear for about 5 seconds, and then it will re-appear with the "Re-Vamped" dock.
5. If you don't like the dock, go to "LeopardDocks.com" and grab another and repeat step 4, or simply go back to the standard dock. Once you have the dock the way you like it. Just delete all the files we had before that I had you download. The dock will stay "Revamped" for as long until you change it back.
Hopefully this was an informative tutorial for you all. Despite the amount of typing, it's a relatively simple process. Here's what the dock looks like after:
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