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Submission details

12 +18/-6 votes

Stacks: show an icon for each kind of stack

Submitted by mojo2012 on September 27, 2008 to Aesthetics, Usability

I like the stacks feature. But I hate that normally there are no icons for that stack. Either show the folder icon, or show the contents. If you have a few stacks it's hard to distinguish them, because they look quite similar.

It's a pitty, it's not only more beautiful but also more user-friendly.

Btw: The left stack shows the last used apps. As this is not a true folder, it is not possible to use the stack icon hack as used for the other two stacks.

Show a stack icon for each kind of folder (downloads, documents, movies, ..) as seen in the screenshot.

Medium

High

Not fixed

Fixed in Snow Leopard

Discussion (8 comments)

ebaur wrote on September 27, 2008, 3:14pm

I'm confused... when you have them show the folder icon, they do look different, since the folder icons are different. I have Applications, Documents and Downloads all in my Dock and they are easy to tell apart. If the images are too subtle for you, you can change the icons quite easily.

This sounds more like a general complaint that the UI is more understated across the board than previous ones. Beauty is, as they say, in the eye of the beholder. I quite like the folder icons as they are.

mojo2012 wrote on September 27, 2008, 6:49pm

Well, there are two options: see the folder icon or see the contents. What I wanted to say is, it's better to see both. In my screenshot the stack icon shows the content, and the rar icon in the background, shows what is the last added file in the stack.
In my case this is an ugly hack, as the stack overlay icon must be placed in the stack folder.

abitgone wrote on September 27, 2008, 10:17pm

If it's a folder, just set the icon of the folder to whatever you want, and then choose "use folder icon".

mojo2012 wrote on September 28, 2008, 9:36am

Hmm, it seems that you do not understand what I mean. If I change the icon of the ~/Documents folder to a stack overlay icon, then the Finder will display the icon as well. I want the normal Document Folder Icon in the Finder. Additionally, this doesn't show the content of the folder, which is very important to me.
So the only solution is to join these two view modes: show the contents of the folder as stack icon + use an overlay icon to show the kind of the stack.

So I don't want to use the "Use Folder Icon" + I don't want to use "Use Stack Icons" (don't know the english terms) --> I want to use both at the same time.

polycat33 wrote on September 29, 2008, 12:41am

I understand what you're talking about and I absolutely agree. Though since clearly not everyone agrees or even sees the problem, it should be an option. SO many people love the hack to get an overlay that looks like a box/drawer, it should be an option built into the UI to view the stack as a "stack" of the icons in the file, but underneath something that helps distinguish the contents of that stack as compared to the one next to it.

I specifically don't have a recent applications stack because of the fact I can't use the overlay hack on it! Would LOVE it to be an option in the UI itself.

mojo2012 wrote on September 29, 2008, 7:54am

Ah finally someone who understands my needs ;-)

Grey_Podder wrote on September 29, 2008, 9:26pm

mojo2012,
+1. I am using the same overlay hack. My preference would be for Apple to use the current folder icons, but have the folder animate to open when clicked. Then the icons could fly out into a List, Grid or Fan view and be hidden away once clicked again.

mojo2012 wrote on September 2, 2009, 4:58pm

This is finally is solved in snow leopard, though it's done with overlay icons. Instead the folder icon is shown.
Now there are two options, show as "stack" or as "folder". In Leopard, showing as folder was possible, but then the stack acted as link to the folder. Now it works correctly.

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