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Dock vs. Taskbar, Advanced

Overview

Need more details on the dock and taskbar? This page describes the unique features, benefits, and deficiencies of each.

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Shared assets (both the dock and the taskbar)

1. Notifications are a discreet section
2. Placement along any screen edge (dock cannot be placed along the top for obvious reasons)
3. Auto-hide
4. Third parties can develop items for the tray and the menu bar (not technically part of the dock, but this is OS X's equivalent to XP's tray)

Dock Assets

1. Dock can be resized; icon magnification can be turned on or off; degree of magnification is user-selectable
2. Strong visual feedback
3. Application icons slide out of the way when dragging another application icon to the left side of the dock, indicating that the item can be added to that location (the same is true when adding documents or folders to the right side of the dock)
4. Minimize a window and it animates (the "genie effect") on its way down to the dock
5. Remove icons and they disappear in a "puff of smoke"
6. Dock icons can display "badges" as user feedback, i.e. progress bars, number of mail messages, etc.
7. Icons highlight when dragging documents onto them to denote that they can open that file. Hold -Option to force an application to open that file
8. Minimized icons are miniature replicas of the window, permitting visual identification of the item (if the item is distinct in shape, color, or layout, and the icon is sufficiently large to permit such discernment). Minimized icons also sport badges of the application they pertain to
9. Icons stay in the order that you arrange them, encouraging muscle memory. Caveat: Minimizing windows or opening applications not already in the dock will cause dock items to shift to the left to accommodate the new item, working somewhat against muscle memory
10. Frontmost windows are distinguished (in dock icon contextual menus) with a check; minimized windows with a diamond; open background windows with no icon
11. Dock icons frequently have custom menus to control the application without bringing it to the foreground (examples: iTunes, Terminal, Mail, System Preferences)
12. Click an application's dock icon to bring that application and all its associated windows to the front, preserving their placement and stacking order. This is more useful than the taskbar since when you switch back to another application, you usually also want to switch back to the document you were last working on. This method can also be useful if you spatially arrange your windows - you can bring all of them to the front and recall that you were working in the leftmost window, for example.

Dock Liabilities

1. Icons are occasionally moving targets, and moving targets can be a bad thing:
1. If you want to throw an item into the trash, dragging it slightly to the left of the trash will cause icons to move out of the way, incorrectly assuming you want to add the dragged item to the dock rather than the trash
2. With magnification turned on, dock icons will grow as your mouse approaches them (which is good, since it makes them larger targets). However, once your mouse passes the middle of the icon, the icon actually moves away from your mouse. Therefore, scrubbing your mouse across the dock with magnification turned on takes more dexterity than one would imagine. Furthermore, as you move your mouse towards a dock icon with magnification turned on, it can be extremely difficult to keep your eye fixed on it as it moves and grows.
2. Although dock icons adhere to Fitt's Law when clicking on them (you can click on the bottom of the screen under an icon to click the icon), they do not adhere to Fitt's Law when dragging and dropping items onto them. For instance, drag an item underneath the trash icon, and the trash won't highlight. Releasing the item under the trash cancels the operation
3. Minimized icons are occasionally visually indistinguishable from one another, requiring "scrubbing" your mouse over them to reveal their text labels
4. Only minimized Finder windows can be closed directly from the dock. All other minimized windows must first be restored before they can be closed. The reason for this limitation is unclear

Dock double-edged sword

1. Text labels only appear while "scrubbing" your mouse over the icons, forcing you to rely more heavily on visual cues (reduced screen clutter, unless you require the label to distingush the item)
2. File system access is user-selectable: add your Applications folder to the dock (possibly slow, unofficial solution, yet infinitely user-modifiable)
3. Magnification: strong visual feedback as to the location of your mouse, but moving targets can be tricky to click on
4. Dual use of real estate: shortcuts and running apps share the same space (real-estate efficient, yet possibly confusing)
5. Non-minimized windows don't get individual icons (real-estate efficient, yet possibly slower). Users must access them via
1. The application's dock menu,
2. The application's Window menu,
3. Their arrangement on the screen (assuming they aren't obscured)

Taskbar assets

1. Multiple taskbars
2. Access to all applications via Start Menu
3. Access to the Task Manager
4. Toolbars can be locked/unlocked
5. Toolbars can float anywhere on the screen
6. Toolbars can be attached ("docked") to a screen edge
7. Auto-hide and always-on-top settings for multiple toolbars can be set per toolbar
8. Address bar gives quick access to the web, FTP, or filesystem
9. Text labels (almost) always visible
10. When grouped, taskbar buttons often (but not always) display the number of open windows pertaining to that application
11. Taskbars support the display of HTML content (by virtue of Active Desktop)

Taskbar Liabilities

1. It doesn't distinguish the frontmost window (when icons are grouped into one button by application). In this state, selecting the frontmost window from the list counterintuitively minimizes it
2. It doesn't distinguish minimized vs. non-minimized windows
3. Taskbar items are distinguished by application icons and text labels. Text labels are often insufficent to distinguish a window when truncated, especially if multiple windows have similar names (i.e., Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel can get truncated to "Micro..." and "Micro...")
4. XP has no method of returning to an application (and all its associated windows) without changing their order and placement. You can choose cascade, tile horizontally, or tile vertically, or bring one window forward at a time (though this most likely alters their order)
5. Inconsistent treatment of taskbar labels for MDI windows
6. Weak or no visual feedback (for example, Quick Launch icons do not highlight to indicate whether or not they can open an item dragged onto them)
7. Taskbar tooltips sometimes fall behind the taskbar
8. No one-click way to quit an application if its windows aren't grouped into a button
9. Quick Launch toolbars only have 2 selectable icon sizes: small or large

Taskbar double-edged sword

1. Real-estate organized by task: shortcuts and open windows are in discreet sections (organized, yet real-estate hungry)

Addendum

1. XP has only minimize or maximize-in-front-of as a method of concealing windows. OS X additionally has Hide. Hiding an application will also hide all of its minimized icons, thereby reducing Dock clutter
2. XP windows sport the icon of the opening application. OS X windows sport the icon of the file type of the window. OS X only displays icons on windows that should be proxy-able (files/folders). XP displays icons on windows that should be proxy-able, as well as MDI/application windows. These window icons do not behave the same as proxy-able icons (proxy icons can be drag-and-dropped to manipulate the file)
3. The dock has some useful shortcuts:
1. -option-click an application in the dock to reveal all its windows and hide the windows of all other applications
2. Option-click the minimize button on a window to minimize all windows associated with that application; option-click the close button to close all of them
3. Hold -option while dragging a file icon onto an application icon to force that application to open the file

Non-scoring section

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