Locking the Dock

[Rob Lines]

On Feb 4, 2008 7:06 PM, DANTE Mclean <dante.mclean at sympatico.ca> wrote:

> Wondering if anybody knows of a way to "lock" the icons in the dock?
>
> I've got an iMac--I belive running under 10.4--in the Kindergarten room.
> The kids removed a dock icon by accident.  I figure, once they discover
> the
> little "poof" when you take an icon out of the dock, it won't be long
> before
> it is an intentional accident.
>
> I'd like to be able to restrict the privileges on their account a bit
> more,
> say something similar to what I can do with Mac Manager on the 9.2.2
> machines in the computer lab.
>
> At the very least, the dock must be locked.
>


If you have an OSX Server running 10.4 (or the same version as the client)
that the kindergarden machine is connected to the open directory of you
could use workgroup manager to set preferences on the machine level.  I
created a list of apps that I wanted to be in the dock on all the computers
and applied it to them.  I don't have workgroup manager in front of me at
the moment but there are a number of options on how the icons appear.  One
is to have it apply only the first time that it is logged on (not the best
option because you want it to heal itself) another option is to force only
those dock items and another one is to merge with the user's dock.  I pretty
much cleaned the default user template of all the items in the dock and then
use workgroup manager to hand down some sane defaults.  While the students
can still remove items from the dock a simple log out and log back in
repairs it.  It also allows for a teacher to add additional software under
their log on.  I also used workgroup manager to hand down some additional
items in the dock just for the teachers such as the gradebook utility and
some of the more advanced graphics and design software (Adobe Suite) that
the kindergarden kids really don't need or use.  It works pretty well and
makes rolling out a new package and ensuring that it is on the dock properly
easy as you can roll it out before hand and have people test it and once you
are sure it is good to go you just add the icon to the dock and suddenly all
the machines have it.

Rob