Adobe CS3 Stack

One feature that didn’t make the cut for Leopard was the ability to select a group of applications and drag them into the Dock to create a Stack of those applications. Many people, however, have wanted to create Stacks for different groups of applications and have been forced to drag the actual applications into a folder which must then be dragged to the Dock. Or in the case of the Adobe CS3 programs (which cannot be moved from their folders) you’re forced to make aliases to those programs to put in a Stack folder. However, making the aliases results in the programs in the Stack having an alias badge in the corner of the icon.

Wouldn’t they look so much better in a stack without the alias arrow badges in the bottom left corner of every icon?

Well, I have come up with a solution that works for me. It isn’t perfect but it gets the job done if you are willing to wait about 1 to 3 seconds longer for your application to launch after clicking it. This is accomplished with the help of AppleScripts. All you have to do is write a simple AppleScript for each application telling it to launch (for example: ‘tell application “Illustrator” to launch’), save the script as an application, and change the icon of the script to the corresponding application icon. Then take all the scripts, put them in a folder titled “Design Premium CS3″ (or something of that nature), and drag the folder to the right side of the Dock.

And there you have it… a working Adobe CS3 application Stack.