While fooling around i figured this out. perhaps im not the first and perhaps this is very well known, but its still pretty cool.
Hold command and click on your stack to directly open the folder that the stack uses to store files.
This way if when you click your stack and you cant see all of the items in it, you can do this trick and hopefully have it easier.
I can’t take complete credit for this–some of the information in this tip is thanks to “A New Mac Tip a Day. However, the icons used and the method for getting them is unique to this tip.
I have personally always liked a “uniform” look to the old contextual folders I used to keep in the right hand side of my dock in Tiger. As long as each folder is identifiable, it gives the dock a cleaner look–especially when you compare it to the current “stacks” mentality of Leopard.
To complete this trick, you need to understand the concept that whatever item is sorted at the top of a stack will act as the displaying icon of that stack in the dock–a fact that is obviously annoying and counter-intuitive. This tip will use that to our advantage, though!
1) Let’s begin by choosing one stack icon to change. Let’s go with “Applications” for now. If you open your main HD directory, the applications folder has the nice clean blue “applications” folder. Right click on that folder and choose “get info.” The familiar info pane pops up for our Applications folder.
2) In the info pane, go up to the top to click and highlight the Application folder icon. Copy it.
3) Now create a new folder on your desktop.
4) Right-click on this newly created folder, bringing up the info pane once again. This time, go up to the top of the pane, click once on the icon to highlight it, and PASTE the Application icon you copied in step 2.
5) Now you have a folder with an “Application” folder look to it on your desktop. Here’s where the fun part comes in: Rename the folder to “0Applications_Label” — or something similar, as long as the number “0″ is the firs character in the name.
6) Drag this newly renamed folder into your Application folder or Stack (either way is fine, as long as it’s in there!).
7) Right click on the Applications stack in your dock, and make sure to sort the contents by “name.”
And that’s it! Now you have a nice new “Applications folder” in your dock, and no matter what the contents are, you will always see the Application folder icon there.
Repeat these steps for any stacks you keep in the right hand side of the dock. I did it for 3 other folders: My “Home” folder, my “Downloads” folder, and a personal “To Be Sorted” folder I use daily. In each case, I made a new folder, added identifiable icons, renamed each (”0Downloads_Label,” etc.), and put them in their respective stacks. The result is below:
magnified:
So far, the only drawback is that you can still see some “lower leve” stacking of icons within each stack, but that’s ok. It looks better, and works better!
The only thing missing is contextual browsing! 
