Reader Randy Palmer is less than happy with one of Leopard’s Dock behaviors. He writes:
In versions of OS X before Leopard I was able to put my hard drive in the Dock, click and hold on it, and see the contents of the hard drive plus arrows that took me to the enclosed folders. Because of Stacks I can’t do that any longer. Is there a way to do this under Leopard?
Not in a satisfactory way, no. When you drag your hard drive or any folder into the Dock, it turns into a stack, which is clearly not the behavior you want. You can cheat this a little bit by creating an alias to the hard drive or folder. Just select the item, press Command-Option, drag the item to create the alias, and drag the alias to the Dock. This won’t create a stack but rather an item that, when clicked, opens the host folder. Regrettably, it doesn’t reveal the folder’s hierarchy — you won’t see enclosed folders when you click and hold on the alias in the Dock.
You can pay for a solution — one I’ve been using for years. That solution is James Thomson’s $29 DragThing. DragThing is a palette-based file launching utility (and so much more) that, among other things, provides the click-and-hold hierarchical view of volumes and folders you crave. Thanks to DragThing I rarely see my Dock.