I Can Not Get My Dock Transparent! Please Help!

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Hi, guys.

I'm running OS X 10.5.8. A couple years ago I did some research to get my dock transparent, so the icons would appear to just be floating there. No border or background, just completely transparent. At least I thought I did.

I changed my wallpaper for the first time in years today and have now discovered that my dock wasn't made transparent, but black to blend in with my old wallpaper.

I'm now trying to rectify this situation to no avail. I've searched through my whole hard drive looking for whatever application I used to do this in the past and can't find anything. I've spent quite a while now searching Google for help. I tried ClearDock and TransparentDock (something like that). Neither one of them had any affect on my dock. I also found a lot of posts, videos, etc. about a program called Mirage, which was apprently created by a user of these forums. However, the version compatible with 10.5 is no longer available and there are no mirrors for it.

If anyone can help me out that would be great. Seeing this black dock overlapping my new wallpaper is really bugging me.
 

chscag

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Try using candybar. Free download from here. It should work to restore your dock back to transparent. Make sure you download a version compatible with Leopard.
 
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I appreiciate the reply. I downloaded CandyBar and figured out how to use it. Apparently you download docks and then drag them into the program.

I've dragged them into the program, applied them, and relaunched my dock; however, none of them are working on my dock. My dock seems to be forever plagued by this black background that I can't get rid of!

Any more ideas?
 

chscag

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Try SuperDocker. It's free and should work with Snow Leopard OK even though it says Leopard. I used it with Snow Leopard and was able to get my dock to go transparent. LINK
 
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Tried it. Still no luck. There's definitely something wrong. With SuperDocker, I'm able to change my dock's position on the screen and everything fine. When I switch between 2d and 3d nothing happens. It still remains 2d with this **** black background behind it. I tried making it transparent in SuperDocker, it tells me my changes were applied successfully, yet it's still the same.

Have you ever heard of something like this? What could be preventing all these programs from changing my dock? I went into my dock's contents and removed ALL .png files, just to see what would happen. Even that had no effect on it.
 

chscag

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There's definitely something else going on because SuperDocker should work with Snow Leopard to give you a transparent dock. It won't work with Lion or Mountain Lion though. I'm assuming you don't have a Time Machine backup you could use to go back to before you changed your wallpaper?

You may wind up having to do an archive and reinstall of Leopard if you still have your original Leopard install DVD. Or, for $19.99 you can upgrade to Snow Leopard. Apple is again selling Snow Leopard from their on line store.
 
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Nope, I don't have a back-up that I know of. Even if I did, I don't think it would make a difference as my last background was black. I think the background on my dock has been black this whole time since I thought I made it transparent years ago.

I did some searches and found a way to reset the dock back to factory settings. I tried it and amazingly it worked. I loaded up SuperDocker and as soon as I changed it back to 2d the black background reappeared and nothing I can do changes it.

Unfortunately, it looks like I'm just going to have to deal with it. I've been wanting to get rid of this computer for a while anyway. It's so slow and locks up constantly.
 

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