SLUGGER O'TOOLE
Notes on Northern Ireland politics and culture

In the heady days of Stormont, and after its abolition in 1972, Unionists argued (sometimes hysterically) that "democracy" should be observed in that if the North had a Protestant majority,even of 1 person, then that majority governed. And to hell with the whinging 49.999999 miority.
If the situation is going to be reached in afew years that there is a slight Catholic majority (and VERY slight it's likely to be, at first at any rate), then do the same rules not apply? When Unionists are in majority, they rule. If they become a minority, they expect the same sort of special arrangement they spent 60 years strenuously denying nationalists. They are now demanding, in some cases, preferential treatment to be guaranteed into the future in a way that the Civil Rights Marchers of 1969 would not have dreamt of, let alone demanded!

Crazy world, eh Mr Paisley.

There wil be a united Ireland within thirty years max. Sin é.

You Must Promise. To call your mother, to help old ladies cross the road, and to turn your cell phone off at the movies.

Adopt Sheets. I really like the use of Sheets in OS X. The use of Sheets lets me know which window my dialogue belongs to without hijacking my system.

Clicking an application in the dock should always bring forward an active window. If the user clicks on an open app's icon in the Dock, the application is active and all unminimized windows come along with it. I have found a few problems with windows behaving independently of their application.

Adhere to System Appearance. Does your application use all the sweetly colored buttons, delightfully shaded windows, and all the other "bells and whistles?"

Due to the positioning of the Dock, remember that when you build an application, you have to be sure that new document window sizes and positions do not violate the Dock's space. Dock is temperamental and Dock loves his space. If you default to a window size that expands behind the dock, users will have a difficult time reaching the navigation and resize areas at the bottom of the screen. I can personally say that more than once I have been rather peeved that I couldn't get to an area of the window to resize because the default window settings always pop up behind the Dock. In addition, the new Dock in 10.1 will allow users to position their Dock location on either side of the screen as well.

Okay, I just told you what Apple wants you to look out for with window positions, but in the real world, not everyone uses the hiding feature of the Dock, and it is unrealistic to be able to predict where each user will place their Dock at any given day or how large they will have it. However, you can build a feature into your application that allows spacing for the Finder. You can give users the option of where to position their windows and what area of the screen not to cross. I know that BBEdit provides me with this feature, and I wish more developers gave me more control over my windows.

Dock Animation. Sometimes animating icons in the dock can be useful in communicating the status of the system or application.

Dock Animation. Sometimes animating icons in the dock can be useful in communicating the status of the system or application.

In building your amazing Aqua application, one of the most important things to consider is the Dock. There are three things your app needs to be "Dock Compliant." Now, I write this knowing that the Dock will be going through some major changes soon, but for the most part, these should still hold true.

You Must Promise. To call your mother, to help old ladies cross the road, and to turn your cell phone off at the movies.

Slugger O'Toole records news, commentary and diverse opinion on Northern Ireland.

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