When Multibar first launches after its installation, it will proceed to index your files and folders. This step is necessary if you want to use the instant search feature. Unfortunately, Multibar presently can only index your C drive.

Multibar opens at the touch of a button and that button is your [Windows] key. When you click this hotkey, your cursor will instantly jump to the instant search field (red arrow in screenshot below). In the window below you will see a selection of quick launch commands. Type in a program or folder you want to open or click your [Tab] key to move to the other items in the instant search window.

When you hover over an application icon in your Multibar, it will show the recently used files, provided you didn’t disable this Windows feature. Hovering over a folder will show its content.

You can manually open the Multibar with your mouse by clicking the little pull-down label on the side or top of your screen. It is also shown directly below.

When the dock is open, click the tools icon in the top left corner to access Multibar’s settings.

If you don’t like the fact that the Multibar opens when you hit the [Windows] key, you can disable this hotkey. Further hotkeys can be accessed and modified via the respective tab.

Through the settings you can customize the look and feel of your Multibar. Decide where on your screen it is located, how it behaves, change the size of the icons and the background, and set which icons are shown.

Presently, you have the choice between 11 different skins for your Multibar, which are available via the Themes tab.

Multibar comes with a small selection of added tools: games, a friend meter, and a weather forecast tool. More addons (some premium) can be found on the Ticno homepage. The smart folders feature advertised on the installation screen appears to be missing in the current build.

The only default addon worth mentioning here is the weather forecast tool. It determines your present location based on your IP address and will show a five day forecast when you hover over the icon in your Multibar. The games and friendmeter addons didn’t work for me and I recommend to disable them via the addons tab in the settings.

Taken together, Multibar is a very sleek, unobtrusive, and intuitive to use application dock for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.

MakeUseOf has previously written about docks, please check out these articles:

• How To Create A Dock In Windows Vista
• Docks – The 6 Best Friends of your Windows Taskbar
• 4 Applications to Give Windows XP Mac Functionality

How do you organize and access your shortcuts to files, folders, and applications? Do you love your chaotic desktop or have you found other ways to handle them? Please share your strategy with us!

Well, today we’ll be taking a look at 6 of these meticulously crafted launcher iPhone themes for Android that can give your phone a refreshing dose of iOS rounded icons, docks and wallpapers.

While you can find a number of paid themes that can bring you even more customization options, the ones on this list are free and will get you started in making your phone look like a close brother of the iPhone. They all require you to have at least one third-party launcher/homescreen replacement app though, but most of them are free and very well-rated. One such launcher is ADW Launcher, for which we’ve already shown you where to get an iPhone theme for. For additional themes that you can use with other popular launchers such as Go Launcher Ex and even LauncherPro, read on!

Classic iPhone Themes

iPhone Go Launcher EX Theme [Android 2.0+]

For those of you who use and love Go Launcher EX, this theme brings you the default look from iOS, including classic rounded icons, dock and 3 wallpapers, but I couldn’t find the two other wallpapers that were presented on the Market product page (if you know, let me know in the comments!)

You can also choose a different app drawer background though the default one looks pretty slick.

QR Code:

If you’re using a different launcher, such as ADW or LauncherPro, worry not. There’s a similar theme for all three launchers that contains the classic icons, and a few more dock and wallpaper options.

iPhone VO Theme Lite [Android 2.1+]

For users with ADW Launcher 1.3.0+, Launcher Pro 0.86 or even Go Launcher 2.35+, this theme will provide a nice-looking launcher with classic icons, backgrounds and sounds as well.

If you like the icons from iOS, but don’t mind a few changes, this theme should be for you. You’ll see that the icons’ backgrounds are more colorful than on the original platform, and even the wallpaper is different.

What’s cool about this theme is that it comes with an actual drawer app shortcut, so you can browse through the theme’s backgrounds, sounds, etc, in contrast to other themes where you have to browse through the launcher’s preferences.

QR Code:

For more backgrounds, icon sets, and sounds, check out the full version.

iPhone-Inspired Themes

iPhone VD Theme Lite [Android 2.1+]

For the iPhone-inspired themes, we’ll be taking a look at this theme that wraps all icons in black, rounded containers.

This theme is available for LauncherPro, ADW Launcher and Go Launcher EX users, and as a drawer app, so you can browse through the theme’s offerings natively, without going through the launcher’s preferences.

As you can see, the ad only shows up when you open the app drawer. If you want more backgrounds, icon sets, and no ads, check out the full version here.

QR Code:

iPhone Black Go Launcher Theme [Android 2.0+]

I used to consider black a bit boring, but the previous and the current black themes have certainly proved me wrong. Like the previous theme, this one offers a set of cool and elegant icons, backgrounds, and more.

I know, the multi-color Apple logo on the wallpaper might be a little too much for Android purists, but I can’t help but think it’s absolutely gorgeous. Here’s a glimpse of the logo-free app drawer.

QR Code:

iPhone 3.0 Go Launcher Theme [Android 2.0+]

This theme brings forth slightly more vector-ish icons and cleaner but familiar overall looks. What’s neat is that the Market product page even has app and widget recommendations for the ultimate iPhone-ish look.

As you’ll see, this theme is iPhone-inspired, with even the wallpaper closely resembling the default raindrop background.

QR Code:

iPhone Epic Go Launcher Theme [Android 2.0+]

I’ve saved my favorite one for last, the iPhone Epic theme. It’s extremely colorful and has way-rounder icons (reminds me a bit of Puppy Linux’s original icon set).

If you need a refreshing splash of color, I’d definitely recommend this theme.

QR Code:

That rounds off our list of iPhone-inspired themes for Android. Care to share additional themes to this collection? Let us know about your favorite themes in the comments below!

From Panther to Tiger to Leopard and now, Snow Leopard, we’ve seen Exposé slowly maturing from a young cub to the ferocious beast it is today. There’s just so much more you can do with Exposé now compared to a year or two ago. And sticking with the multitasking motif, I’ll show you 6 different ways you can make use of Exposé in your daily workflow, shaving precious seconds off your regular routine.

Quick Look in Exposé

Quick Look is now integrated into Exposé, allowing you to preview a window without exiting Exposé. Invoke the All Windows Exposé view and while your mouse cursor is hovering over a window (highlighted by a blue rim), press Spacebar. You are now previewing that window in full resolution but wait, you’re still in Exposé. You may either press Spacebar again to return to the All Windows view or click on the preview (or press Enter) to select that window or the Escape key to exit Exposé.

This works wonders if you have a lot of windows open and they end up being generated as tiny thumbnails. There’s no more guesswork involved. You can now be sure of the window you’re selecting while still in Exposé.

Cycle through apps

In Snow Leopard, Apple introduced Dock Exposé, where you can now click and hold on any Dock icons to invoke an Application Window Exposé view. While in that view, you can press Tab and cycle through any running application. Pressing the accent (`) key will reverse the cycle order.

You can achieve the same effect via the Application Switcher. Press Command+Tab and hold the Command key. Keep pressing the Tab key until you reach an application you want to view in Application Window Exposé view and hit the 1 key while still holding on to Command. You can now release the Command key and press Tab or the accent key to cycle through applications on your Dock.

Reorder windows by name and type

If you have loads of open windows, viewing them individually and finding the right one in Exposé can be tricky. The order in which Exposé windows seem to be arranged in Snow Leopard remains a mystery to me. However, you can arrange the windows alphabetically if you hit Command+1 while in Exposé. Pressing Command+2 groups similar apps together in no particular (known) order.

In the screencast below, I tried to demonstrate the difference between reordering by name and by type.

Select window by name

Let’s just say that you’re working with a lot of windows and you’d like find a specific one while in Exposé. By typing the first few letters of the window you’re looking for, Exposé will refocus the highlighted window to the closest match.

In the screencast below, watch my mouse cursor as it highlights the ‘Music’ folder. I begin to type “thi” and the highlight jumps to wrap around Things. Press Enter to select that window and exit Exposé.

Quit and hide apps

Notice that now, even in Exposé, the Dock is still in view. If you left-click on any dock icon, a contextual menu will pop up to provide you with options to quit, hide, keep in Dock, open at login and show in Finder.

In the same vein, you can also quit an app while using the Application Switcher. Press Command+Tab and hold the Command key. Hit the Tab key until you reach the app you want to quit then press the Q key, still holding on the Command key. The app in question will quit without interfering with Application Switcher.

In the screencast below, I’ll demonstrate how both of these methods look like when they are performed.

Only show windows from current Space

As I said above, Spaces is another friend all for mutitasking. Alas, a caveat — when invoking Exposé in Snow Leopard with Spaces activated, all windows from every Space is shown. To make Exposé display only the windows from the current Space, a little Terminal magic is required.

Launch Terminal then copy and paste these commands in one at a time and hit Enter after each one.

defaults write com.apple.dock wvous-show-windows-in-other-spaces -bool FALSE

killall Dock

To restore Exposé back to its original settings:

defaults delete com.apple.dock wvous-show-windows-in-other-spaces

killall Dock

So there you have it, 6 useful tips to help you manage Exposé and multitask more efficiently. I hope that they come in useful.

If you have any more Exposé tips, feel free to add them in the comments section.

Image credit: James the photographer

However, for whatever absurd reason, Apple does not give the clock a calendar display. We have to depend on third party application(s) for this “should’ve been part of the OS” feature.

I’ve tried several applications and at the moment I’ve settled with the combination of Mac OS X menu bar clock and TinyCal – a Mac menu bar calendar with Google Calendar integration (free for basic features).

The problem is, the location of the menu bar clock is inconveniently separated from TinyCal.

I began to wonder whether we can re-arrange the order of items in the menu bar so that the couple could be positioned next to each other.

The random re-arrangement

It turns out that its possible to re-arrange the Mac menu bar items. A quick web search reveals that all that you have to do is just click and drag the item around to the location that you prefer while holding the Command key. Very convenient.

You can also drag out the items from the menu bar just like you can with the Dock items. A quick way to unclutter your menu bar.

However, this trick is only applicable to native Mac OS X applications like the clock, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi; with the exception of Spotlight which always stays at the utmost right of the menu bar. As for third party applications, they are just untouchable.

Non-Mac menu bar items are arranged in the order of their loading. But there’s no way to determine which app pops up first in the menu bar because they load simultaneously and not in sequence – another feature that should’ve been included by Apple.

So far, I am able to drag the clock as near to TinyCal as possible just by dragging it left. But to move the TinyCal right, another trick is required.

Leveraging the login items

You can’t touch the third party menu bar items, that much is clear. But that doesn’t mean you can’t try to take the different route: manipulate the login items. My research on tweaking the login items led me to several scripting solutions – the area where I prefer not to go.  Luckily I found one app called DelayedLauncher which is almost perfect for the job.

What DelayedLauncher does is delay the start up of chosen applications, then activate them after the pre-set delay time.

To achieve our objective of placing TinyCal next to the Mac’s menu bar clock, we should set TinyCal to load before the other menu bar items.

All you have to do is drag and drop all the third party menu bar apps from the Applications folder to the DelayedLauncher window. Then you set the delay time – how long do you want the system to wait at login before starting to launch the applications on the list. You can do this by moving the slider left or right. There’s the indicator on the right area of the window telling you the exact delay time (in seconds) related to the position of the slider.

The next step is to delete all of the menu bar items from the Login Items in the Accounts of System Preferences, and add TinyCal and DelayedLauncher there. This involves a simple process of clicking the minus and plus button below the application list pane.

There you go. A little lengthy process just to satisfy the curious.

But I learned a few useful new things here. First: I can finally get rid of that useless menu bar item; and second: I can decrease the login load of my system by delaying some items from starting up at login.

Please note that if you launched DelayedLauncher the second time to add more items, you have to click on the slider to stop the count down. This app don’t have any icon and also doesn’t have the feature to start the listed apps one by one in sequential order – yet.

So here’s the definition of the Dock according to Apple’s Dictionary:

An application launcher that comes with Mac OS X. The Dock is located along the edge of the screen. It contains icons for many of the applications available on the computer, and you can drag icons to and from the Dock. The Dock shows that an application is running by displaying a small black triangle below or next to its icon.

Most Mac users just accept the Dock as it is. But maybe they shouldn’t. There are many ways to tweak the Dock, and here are several of them.

Part One: On The Dock

First, we’ll start from the obvious: the Dock itself.

1. Resizing the Dock

You can easily resize the dock by hovering your mouse on the dock, click on the dividing line, then drag up or down to adjust the size. If you just click and hold, the magnification effect will be off temporarily until you release the click.

2. Right click options

If you do right click (or Control + Click) on the dividing line, a pop up menu with several options will appear. Among them is changing the location of the dock.

If you choose to open the Dock Preferences, you’ll get more or less the same options with the right click.

But if you right click or click and hold on one of the application icons, you’ll get options for that application instead.

3. Removing icons

You can just drag out an inactive application’s icon from the dock to remove them.

Part Two: Inside The Terminal

Now we’ll move onto the real stuff. If anyone wants to do serious tweaking on Mac OS X, there’s no better (and scarier) way to do it than using command lines on the Terminal.

4. Add Spaces between icons

Except for the two icons beside the dividing line, all icons in the Dock are located next to one another without too much space.

Using Terminal’s command lines, you can add a separator in the form of blank space between icons to group them. Write (or copy and paste) this command to Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add ‘{ “tile-type” = “spacer-tile”; }’

Hit Enter/Return, then write:

killall Dock

Hit Enter/Return one more time and the Dock will be restarted and missing for a few (milli)seconds. After the Dock return, you’ll find a blank space in the Dock. Drag this space to the location that you want.

Repeat the process to add another blank space.

To remove the blank space, simply drag out the space from the dock. Alternatively, you can right click or click and hold the space and a pop up menu will appear saying “Remove from Dock”. Click on that command to remove the space.

5. Show only the active applications

Sometimes you feel that the Dock contains too many items. You can reduce the crowds by making the Dock shows only icons from the active applications. Use this command line in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dock static-only -bool TRUE

Hit Enter/Return, then write:

killall Dock

Hit Enter/Return one more time to restart the Dock.

To reverse the process, change the “TRUE” into “FALSE” (sans quote).

Part Three: Other Terminal Commands

We are still discussing Terminal commands to tweak the dock. Since the general process is the same, I’d like to simplify the explanation by only mentioning the command lines.

Please remember to always hit Enter/Return after each command line, continued by “killall Dock” command and another hit at Enter/Return key to restart the Dock to enable the change.

6. Flattening the Dock

You can change the appearance of the Dock to the flat 2D view like the older version of Mac OS X by using this command:

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES

To reverse, change the YES into NO.

7. Make the hidden applications transparent

Sometimes Mac users hide some of the open applications (by using Hide menu or Command + H). This process could be enhanced by making the hidden applications icons in the dock transparent. Use this command to activate this effect.

defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool YES

Replace YES with NO to reverse the effect.

Do you know any other tweaks for Dock? Please share them using the comments below.

In my opinion, Stacks isn’t as bad as most people make it seem. I’ve found several useful reasons to keep it around, one of which is detailed here: Use Stacks To Save Websites For Later Reading.

After a bit of brainstorming, I managed to find a few more good uses for Stacks. Some of them may not be new tricks but I’d like to share them with you anyway.

Mail Attachments Stack

For those of you who use Apple Mail as the default mail application, this may actually come in useful for you. You can create a Stack to show all of your recent mail attachments.

Here’s how it works: every time you use Quick Look to preview mail attachments or directly open them by double-clicking on the attachment, they are automatically stored in ~/Library/Mail Downloads/

Simply drag the Mail Downloads folder to the Stacks section of the Dock and let go.

You may be overwhelmed by the thousands of attachments you have in there. It’s a good idea to arrange it by ‘Date Created’ and display it as Fan or List view so that you’ll know which are the latest attachments.

Any attachments which aren’t previewed with Quick Look or opened directly in Mail or instead, saved to the ‘Downloads’ folder will not show up in this folder.

Recent Applications/Documents/Servers Stack

This is a Terminal trick to make a Recent stack show up in the Dock. If you take a look at the Appearance preferences (System Preferences ->Appearance), you’ll notice a section which lets you determine the number of recent applications, documents and servers to display. This will generate a list located in the menu bar, click on the Apple icon -> Recent Items.

This is what you’ll need to do if you want that list to appear as a stack. Open Terminal (located in the Utilities folder or just Spotlight for it) and copy and paste these 2 lines of commands individually:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add ‘{ “tile-data” = { “list-type” = 1; }; “tile-type” = “recents-tile”; }’

killall Dock

After the Dock relaunches, the Recent Items stack will appear.

Right-click on the stack and there is a contextual menu which will allow you to display the recent documents or servers instead.

The ‘Favorite Items’ stack doesn’t really work in Leopard – it merely displays the ‘Places’ section of the Finder sidebar. If you want to display your favorite items…

A Favorites Stack

A Favorites stack is basically a stack of anything which you add to the Favorites folder. This function is not unavailable in Leopard, it’s just slightly harder to find.

The old ‘Control-Option-Click’ shortcut to make an item a Favorite doesn’t work in Leopard. Instead, what you need to do is click on an item to select it, click on the File menu, press and hold the Shift key and click ‘Add to Favourites’. Or select an item and press Command-Shift-T.

The shortcuts/aliases are stored in ~/Library/Favorites/. Drag that folder to the Stacks section in the Dock to make your Favorites stack.

Preferences Stack

By making a Preferences stack, it’s possible to shave a few seconds off your navigating time. It’s not very difficult to make this stack. I’ll just need to explain something: the preference panes you see in System Preferences are located in various folders. Also, it’s not necessary to add all the preference panes to the Stack. For instance, I hardly ever go to the Speech preference pane so I can exclude that from the Stack.

To make this stack, create a folder called Preferences and place it in your Home folder.

Open a new Finder window and go to System/Library/PreferencePanes. Command-click on the preferences you want to add to your stack, then Command-Option-click and drag them to the Preferences folder in the other Finder window. You should end up with a folder of aliases to the preference panes.

These are only the default preferences from Mac OS X. The other preference panes for example Perian or Flip4Mac WMV are located at ~/Library/PreferencePanes. Repeat same procedure to put their aliases into the Preference folder you’ve created.

Once you’re done, drag the Preferences folder to the Stacks section of the Dock.

Stacks as actual drop boxes

By creating stacks for the Public Folder located in your Home folder; and the Public folder in the Dropbox folder (not applicable if you don’t use Dropbox), you can literally create drop boxes as dumping grounds for everything you want to share with others.

Drag-and-drop anything into these stacks and they’re automatically shared within your LAN or through the internet (in the case of Dropbox). To find out how to set up sharing within your local area network, take a look at this Macnifying OS X article.

Are there any other useful Stacks tips you’d like to share with our readers? Let us know in the comments.