Quote:
To help you with real life preferences, you can make the invisible files visible using some Finder commands...

I don't think what Joemikeb and kevs are discussing are invisible files; they're discussing hidden preferences—an entirely different matter.

Here's an example. When Leopard was nearing release, a number of developers were unhappy with the 3D Dock, its glossy shelf, and the subtle blue orbs of light indicating running apps. Ultimately, an option to revert to the Tiger-style 2D Dock was included in the final version of 10.5, but without any GUI (Graphical User Interface) means of accomplishing such a reversion.

To revert to the 2D Dock, one has to go to Terminal and enter

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES; killall Dock

[or, in deference to ganbustein's point about the undesirability of using killall in this fashion, one can run the following Applescript script instead:

tell application "Dock" to quit
do shell script "defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES"

which works on my Mac (OS X 10.5.8), though since the Dock, once quit, automatically relaunches, it's conceivable that if the shell script were delayed, the relaunching of the Dock would precede it, thus negating any change.]

And once one has reverted to the 2D Dock, one finds the following entry in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist:

Code:
<key>no-glass</key>
	<true/>


Note that although this "no-glass" key is nowhere to be found if you've never reverted to the 2D Dock—i.e., it's hidden—the file it appears in once you do revert to the 2D Dock has been visible all along.


dkmarsh—member, FineTunedMac Co-op Board of Directors