Only the most favored, always open applications find their way onto my dock. Let’s start with the file browser Finder and the web browser Google Chrome.

Finder

Perhaps not favored, but there’s not much choice. Finder’s finicky view state and ease of hanging are gradually diminishing annoyances. Only one glaring flaw has remanded untreated for more than a decade: the stupid Finder face. I mean that dumb dock icon. We will give the dock a face lift in due time. For now, I’m content to set the desktop picture to something fitting: Apollo Dancing with the Muses — 1680×1050 for the Hi-Res display.

• Preferences
  • Sidebar
    • ✗ iDisk
    • ✗ All Images
    • ✗ All Movies
    • ✗ All Documents
  • Advanced
    • ✓ Show all filename extensions
    • When performing a search: Search the Current Folder
• Desktop View Options (right-click on desktop Show View Options)
  • Icon size: 48×48
  • Grid spacing: 4.9 ticks — The trick is to get an item placed in the bottom-left corner of the desktop to lineup nicely with the bottom-left corner of the screen.
  • Label Position: Right
  • ✓ Show item info
  • Arrange by: Snap to Grid

Google Chrome

Safari has been a journey up a river of leaking memory culminating in a bright flash, thunderous shockwave, and catastrophic crash. Chrome happily isolates page leaks, and the timely termination of a certain rouge Plug-in is only an End process click away. The browser is an operating system, and with Chrome it acts like one.

• First Start
  • ✗ Import settings from Safari — No settings to import.
  • ✓ Make Google Chrome my default browser
  • ☞ Start Google Chrome
• Preferences
  • Basics
    • Home page: Use the New Tab page
    • Toolbar:
      • ✓ Show Home button
      • ✓ Show Page and Tools menus
  • Personal Stuff
    • ☞ Set Up Sync…
  • Under the Hood
    • Downloads
      • wtaysom/Desktop
• Keyboard Shortcuts (via System Preferences > Keyboard)
  • Task Manager ⌥⌘T
• Extensions
  • AdBlock No thank you, I don’t want any of whatever it is you’re selling.
  • Stop Autoplay for YouTube but allows pre-buffering. I like to open videos in background tabs.
  • Tynt Blocker 2 I like to copy articles into TextEdit for text-to-speech. I don’t like the text to be altered and tracked along the way.
  • Xmarks Chrome already supports bookmark syncing. Xmarks supports open tab syncing too.

Next Time?

Those two essential communication applications: Skype and Mail.