May 14, 2008, 2:19 PM — When Apple
Inc. shipped Mac
OS X 10.5 "Leopard" in October, Macintosh
users were divided about some of the interface changes Apple had made from prior
Mac OS X releases. Chief among these love 'em or hate 'em changes were the newly
translucent menu bar and the 3-D, shelf-like Dock, as well as the new Stacks
feature, which, when you mouse over a folder in the Dock, displays the folder's
contents as a column of icons or a rectangular grid.
It didn't take long for power users and shareware developers to find ways to
tweak the new user interface. At first, modifying Leopard required a level of
comfort and experience using the Mac OS X command line and/or modifying system
files. Over the past six months, however, the options for tweaking Leopard have
become more sophisticated and easier to manage.
Today, most changes can be done easily by any Mac user without trepidation.
Here, we'll highlight ways to make Leopard more Tiger-like, customize its look
and feel to reflect your personality, and show you how to improve certain Leopard
features.
Get back the look of Tiger
Apple's response to complaints about the translucent menu bar came with February's
10.5.2
update, which allows you to turn off the translucent look. If you preferred
the look of the menu bar in Tiger, just uncheck the Translucent Menu Bar option
in the Desktop & Screensaver preference pane.
You can go even further with a free tool from MD Softworks called LeoColorBar,
which performs a handful of tweaking functions, including restoring the familiar
rounded edges to the menu bar -- another subtle change in Leopard. It also lets
you choose a color besides Apple's familiar brushed-metal gray for the menu
bar, a nifty tweak in its own right.
The Leopard 10.5.2 update did not address complaints about the 3-D look of
the Dock when it is positioned at the bottom of the screen. (When placed on
the right or left of the screen, Leopard's Dock reverts to a 2-D style.)
LeoColorBar comes in handy here as well -- it can restore a 2-D look to the
3-D Dock. For those who like the Tiger look, this tool is a must.
Replace the glowing Dock indicators
While LeoColorBar can give you a 2-D Dock, it doesn't change the indicators
for running applications. In Leopard, these indicators were changed from simple
black triangles to glowing dots.
If you want to get the triangles back, a free tool called Dock
Delight allows you to do so with just a couple of clicks. Again, it's a
great tool for anyone who preferred the pre-Leopard Dock.
If you don't want the glowing dots but weren't crazy about the triangles either,
you can customize your Dock with an indicator icon of your choice by replacing
the default images the Leopard uses to create the indicators. Though not difficult
to accomplish, this does require some minor changes to the Leopard system files,
as detailed at the Silver
Mac blog. You can even download a handful of free prepackaged
alternate indicators to use.
Really trick out your Dock
So far, I've talked a lot about customizing the Dock to make it look and act
more as it did in earlier Mac OS X versions. But that isn't your only option.
If you like the idea of a 3-D Dock but not the glass-shelf look, check out the
options at LeopardDocks.com
and Dockulicious.
Both of these sites maintain dozens (if not hundreds) of alternate Docks that
you can download and easily install with tools available from either site.
