David Mann wrote:
On Mar 5, 2004, at 23:41, Keith WHALEY wrote:
What effect would I be looking for by "turn magnification off?" All I want to do is stop that stupid bouncy icon business...
Oh yeah, the bouncing... actually I don't think that can be deactivated as its meant to tell you that the program in question requires attention. I must admit to being not-too-fond of that myself. Its a bit too easy for an application to misuse, as in your case.
Actually I just had a thought. You mentioned that you're using a G4. Depending on how old it is, your graphics card might not be supported by Quartz Extreme.... which itself may be necessary for the magnification. Quartz Extreme loads a lot of the eye-candy calculating off to the graphics card so it doesn't burden the main CPU.
Actually, my G4 is one of the latest versions.
I have the AGP 4x - ATI RADEON 9000 PRO graphics controller. (Apple capitalized it, so also did I. . .)
As for what to look for, its easy enough to show you. With magnification disabled, it doesn't do this:
http://www.digistar.com/~dmann/temp/grab.jpg (1600x1200, 112kb)
Notice the mouse pointer over the Safari icon. As you move the mouse the magnification "rolls" along the dock to follow it. When you move the mouse off the dock, the icons all shrink back to their normal size and the dock's width reduces a little. You can also see the magnification option in my Dock preferences there. I normally have it set at about 3/4; I used the maximum setting to make it a little more obvious.
Aha! I just got it setup on my dock. With a 17" screen I find hiding the dock and moving the cursor over to it works just fine for me. Never knew what the magnification meant. Good idea for these old eyes!
Making the Dock smaller is immaterial. I'll still see it! I have availed myself of the hide the dock option, as that moves the Dock off-screen, and keeps the entire Dock out of my visual field except for when some icon thinks it needs attention!
I tried auto-hiding the dock but getting it back on-screen is
a little more difficult with a tablet. On my "graphics" login I just keep it hidden and summon it up with the "deactivate auto hide" key. For my day-to-day login I leave the dock exposed.
I'm guessing I'll have to wait until I decide to download Panther. . .see what that does.
Trouble with Panther is you can't download it... and there's so much new stuff that there's no "upgrade" price :( For me it was worth it: Xcode, X11 support, Fast User Switching and Expos�... and I quite like the revised Finder.
I understand. However, until I get used to Jaguar, I think I'll stick with it for a while.
For the more recent part of my Mac life (beginning in '86) I've been operating with OS 8.6 or below, and it's only in the last 4 months or so I even went to 9.2.1!
I've heard of little problems with Panther, and I'll wait a bit, see if the 10.3.x versions work out all the little niggly glitches. . .
Cheers,
- Dave
http://www.digistar.com/~dmann/
Thanks for your help. . .
keith whaley
