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How do I restore the Dock "spring icon" URL shortcut?Where do I find the @ sign on a spring Icon. It was at the bottom right of the dock. It took me to the Mac OS X website.I deleted it and would like to restore it to the dock.. This proved quite a bit tougher than I expected, actually, but I have an answer for you. First off, here's the icon you're talking about: ![]() For those of you that don't know, it's a pretty icon for a basic piece of Mac OS X functionality: a URL shortcut in your Dock (the equivalent of the Windows Start Bar). Let me show you where the icon is located in Mac OS X, then I'll show you how to create a shortcut and apply that icon. The fastest way I know to find the icon is to simply copy and paste the following bold text into Terminal.app, an application you can find in Applications -> Utilities on your Mac: $ open /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/url.png
What it will do is open up the spring icon in the Preview application: ![]() That's the icon you seek. Now, to use it... In Safari, go to a page you want to bookmark - perhaps the AskDaveTaylor home page -- and drag the little icon out of the Address Bar (or the tab for the page if you're in multi-tab mode) onto the desktop. In process it'll look like this: ![]() and when you drop it, it'll convert into this: ![]() Almost there. Now we just need to change the icon, which can be done by going back into Preview and choosing Edit -> Copy, then going to the desktop shortcut, clicking it once, then choosing File -> Get Info. You'll see this: ![]() Now click on the icon in the top left of the Get Info window and, oh so subtly, you'll see it get a small highlight. That means it's selected. Choose Edit -> Paste and it'll change to the spring icon, both in the Get Info box and on the desktop. Hurray! ![]() That's all the hard work. Now just drag it onto the Dock itself and drop it where you'd prefer: ![]() Caveat: It's not exactly right because we lost the transparent background of the spring icon (in fact you probably need to use an icon editor to copy and paste the PNG image while retaining the transparency. I'm sure something like GraphicConverter could do it). Nonetheless, that should be 98% of what you seek and I'll leave the nuances up to the reader. :-)
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Categorized:
Mac OS X Help
(Article 7423,
Written by Dave Taylor)
Tagged: mac os x, spring icon, system icons Previous: How do I install Microsoft Windows Vista in Parallels 3? Next: How do I forward my Gmail mail to another account? Reader Comments To Date: 8adam said, on July 4, 2007 9:09 AM:
You can also just drag the url into the dock. Howard Baker said, on July 8, 2007 4:24 PM:
Just go to the upper left corner of the menu bar click and drag the apple to the previous place in the doc. alex said, on April 22, 2008 2:12 PM:
is there another way of doing it? it works perfectly but i cannot open 2 web pages together. it only works one web address at a time. Ed said, on June 5, 2008 5:53 PM:
Go to this website. nerowolfe said, on November 21, 2008 5:34 PM:
Dragging any URL into the dock creates this spring @ thing Chris Orbz said, on February 19, 2009 12:28 AM:
Great tip, very useful... after wrestling with Candybar and iThemeOS, neither of which could do the simple job of changing the spring icon on dock bookmarks, this gave me the proper solution and it's looking sweeeeet! Ramsey said, on September 5, 2011 9:12 AM:
Actually, most Web Browsers have a view all bookmarks section. If you bookmark the page you want and just drag the bookmark to the dock, the transparency will be there.
I do have a comment, now that you mention it!Check This Out Too... |
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In fact, the reason that image is in the Dock.app bundle in the first place is that the Dock will add this icon to a weblink for you, transparency channel included. Just drag the link icon from the address bar in Safari (or another Webkit app) straight to the Dock's document area. No temporary file, no mess. ;)
Unfortunately this won't work from Firefox. A future request for enhancement perhaps.