Dock- deleting items

Hi
I have just purchased an Air 13". My first Mac!
I want to clean up the 'dock', Googled how to delete items, it said move about an inch above the dock, mini cloud will appear and icon will disappear or drag icon to the bin.
Neither works! The cloud appears but the icon goes back to the dock.
Surely there should be a check item in sys prefs to enable these icons to be deleted

You click on it, drag it away from the Dock and take your finger off the TrackPad and it will go Poof . .

Dock - deleting items

TattooedMac said:

You click on it, drag it away from the Dock and take your finger off the TrackPad and it will go Poof . .

Click to expand...

Mine does not go 'poof', cloud appears but no poof.
OSX 10.8.5
MacBook Air 13" 2013 model

If I select and drag to the TRASH, message pops up REMOVE FROM DOC, then it nips back to where it came from.

You need to quit the app first - it won't go poof if it's still running.

Nothing is running.

Try a different user account. Create one if you have to. Then experiment with it and report back.

Is it the case that the app is actually closed or that there are just no windows open? Is there a little blue dot underneath it? If so, the app is still open and needs to be quit completely.