Spaces: A First (and Very Happy) Look

--
David Weintraub
qazwartgmail.com

On 6-Dec-2007, at 14:30, Anyse Joslin wrote:
> only even numbers of spaces and what can I really do with them

??

I use 9 spaces myself. As for what you can do with them, everything
you can with You Desktop, and generally much easier. The only thing,
in fact, that is annoying in Spaces is having to use the System
Preferences to 'pin' an application to a specific space. However,
since you only have to do this ONCE, it's not that big a deal. Still,
hopefully a better UI for this will be coming soon for that.
Otherwise, being able to simply drag windows between spaces, or drag
arbitrary data from space to space using the exposé functions (F8-F11)
makes Spaces a much better VirtDesktop util than You Control's (and
yes, I've used theirs, and several others other the last 15-20 years,
both on Macs and Suns, and Leopard's Spaces is the best of the bunch).

On 6-Dec-2007, at 14:37, David Weintraub wrote:
> Some features that are missing in Spaces:
>
> * Ability to set a window to appear on all desktops or one
> particular desktop via the mouse.

Yep, that's my biggest gripe as well.

> * Set different desktop patterns for each space.

And I would like that too.

> The only bug I've discovered in Spaces is that if you drag a window
> too far off screen, it'll sometimes pop onto another space.


That is not a bug. If you drag something to a screen edge, in moves
to that space, if there is one, following the arrangement in the Pref
Panel. It's a nice and quick way to move a window from one space to
another, and it's even documented.

To move a window from one space to another, use any of these shortcuts:

   â–  Press F8 to view all spaces, and then drag the window to the new
space. To move all the windows belonging to the same application,
press the Shift key while you drag the window.

   â–  Drag the window to the edge of your screen and pause; after a
moment, the window is switched to the new space.

   â–  Move the pointer over the window, and hold down the mouse button
while pressing the Control key and an arrow or number key.

On Dec 6, 2007, at 1:37 PM, David Weintraub wrote:

> The only bug I've discovered in Spaces is that if you drag a window
> too far off screen, it'll sometimes pop onto another space.

That one is a feature. It is intentionally one of the ways to move a
window to another space. (Drag until the cursor is at the screen edge
in the direction you want to go, then pause.)

I have yet to have a window vanish, and I've been using Spaces since
10.5 day 1 (on the Macbook, and day 3 on the Mini). I've had two
situations in which Spaces decided to bounce repeatedly between two
spaces after I switched using command-arrow--select a space by either
other means I tried stopped the bouncing, and all windows were where
they should have been.

Yet clearly other people are having vanishing windows.

I don't have nearly as many third party "must have" "improvements" to
Mac OS X as many people do (nothing from Unsanity, for instance).
That may or may not have anything to do with my good fortune.

The MacBook was upgraded with a default upgrade install (it was fairly
fresh after a hard drive replacement and is nearly a sandbox
machine). The mini was erase and install and migrate from a bootable
clone (one of three bootable clones placed on two different
spindles). YMMV.

   --John

At 1:37 PM -0800 12/6/07, David Weintraub wrote:
>The only bug I've discovered in Spaces is that if you drag a window
>too far off screen, it'll sometimes pop onto another space.

I thought that was a feature, but given the lack of documentation we
won't know..

At the moment I'm space-less, because my brain doesn't want to wrap
around it.. I'll wait for V2.0..

--
~Nick
http://www.inmff.net

> On Dec 6, 2007, at 1:37 PM, David Weintraub wrote:
> > The only bug I've discovered in Spaces is that if you drag a window
> > too far off screen, it'll sometimes pop onto another space.

> On Dec 7, 2007 7:16 AM, <johnbaxterlistsmac.com> wrote:
> That one is a feature. It is intentionally one of the ways to move a
> window to another space. (Drag until the cursor is at the screen edge
> in the direction you want to go, then pause.)

Actually, it's a little stranger than what I first said. Imagine a 2 x
2 layout where spaces 1 & 2 on top and spaces 3 & 4 on the bottom.
You're in Space #2, with Windows "A" and "B". You drag window "A" to
the top, and Window "B" bounces down to Space #4.

Something tells me this isn't a "feature". Still, I do like spaces. I
have pinned both Finder and Pathfinder to all spaces, Mail to Space #2
and Safari to Space #3. Clicking on a link in Mail automatically
switches to Space #3, and I can easily flip back to Space #2 (via
Cmd-Tab) and go back to Mail. This keeps my screen uncluttered and
Windows easy to find.

Which brings up another minor bug: If your application has windows on
multiple spaces, you can't use the Cmd-Backtick to flip between the
application windows. I'll have to see how Expose handles the issue of
application windows being in multiple spaces when you press F10 or F9.

I'm sure these issues will be ironed out in Spaces 1.1.

--
David Weintraub
qazwartgmail.com

--On December 7, 2007 4:16:42 AM -0800 johnbaxterlistsmac.com wrote:

> Yet clearly other people are having vanishing windows.
>
> I don't have nearly as many third party "must have" "improvements" to
> Mac OS X as many people do (nothing from Unsanity, for instance).
> That may or may not have anything to do with my good fortune.

My install was a clean and install and I do have the disappearing window
issue. I don't have Unsanity, but I do have Growl installed and Audio
Hijack Pro's Scheduler Helper (doesn't use Unsanity). Little Snitch is
installed as well but that was a recent install, I had the problem before
that. Same with LogMeIn, which I just installed yesterday.

As for apps I run at startup and are on pretty much consistantly they are:
drag thing, path finder, Consistency, SOHO Notes, PCalc, and iCal. I did
just realize I was using a beta version of drag thing, so I downloaded the
latest version and have switched to that. No idea if it helps any.

As I mentioned previously switching to a space running Mulberry Mail via
ctrl-arrows seems to cause the problem a lot. Since Mulberry is now open
source, I downloaded the source and compilied via XCode on Leopard. That
seems to have made the problem rarer, but it still has occured a few times.

On 2007-12-08, at 01:16, Nicholas Barnard wrote:

>> The only bug I've discovered in Spaces is that if you drag a window
>> too far off screen, it'll sometimes pop onto another space.
>
> I thought that was a feature, but given the lack of documentation we
> won't know..

 From the built-in help 'Working faster with Spaces':

> To move a window from one space to another, use any of these
> shortcuts:
>
>
> â–  Press F8 to view all spaces, and then drag the window to the new
> space. To move all the windows belonging to the same application,
> press the Shift key while you drag the window.
>
> â–  Drag the window to the edge of your screen and pause; after a
> moment, the window is switched to the new space.
>
> â–  Move the pointer over the window, and hold down the mouse button
> while pressing the Control key and an arrow or number key.

> Something tells me this isn't a "feature". Still, I do like spaces. I
> have pinned both Finder and Pathfinder to all spaces, Mail to Space #2
> and Safari to Space #3. Clicking on a link in Mail automatically
> switches to Space #3, and I can easily flip back to Space #2 (via
> Cmd-Tab) and go back to Mail. This keeps my screen uncluttered and
> Windows easy to find.

I liked Spaces, too, but it is not always as useful as one thinks. I
went and assigned my main apps to different spaces. However, in my
work I often need to write up a ticket of what's happening step-by-
step. So, I need different apps open. Sometimes I'm typing up
directions for secretaries or teachers. I have Appleworks and I'm
using Firefox. OK... I can drag them together. The next time I might
be sending an email so I have Firefox up and email, or Safari and
email. Or, sometimes I have Filemaker Pro, Appleworks and Firefox up
as I need to refer to all of them. I am continually switching apps to
the space I'm needing it. I even tried putting the three apps I
"thought" I used most together in one space, but found out I'd
forgotten Excel.

Still, it's great when you're not using three or four types of apps at
once. Unfortunately, a lot of my work has to do with "how-to" and that
usually requires more than one or two apps.

Nanc

On Dec 8, 2007, at 3:17 AM, Kevin van Haaren wrote:

> --On December 7, 2007 4:16:42 AM -0800 johnbaxterlistsmac.com wrote:
>
>> Yet clearly other people are having vanishing windows.
>>
>> I don't have nearly as many third party "must have" "improvements" to
>> Mac OS X as many people do (nothing from Unsanity, for instance).
>> That may or may not have anything to do with my good fortune.
>
> My install was a clean and install and I do have the disappearing
> window
> issue. I don't have Unsanity, but I do have Growl installed and Audio
> Hijack Pro's Scheduler Helper (doesn't use Unsanity). Little Snitch is
> installed as well but that was a recent install, I had the problem
> before
> that. Same with LogMeIn, which I just installed yesterday.
>
> As for apps I run at startup and are on pretty much consistantly
> they are:
> drag thing, path finder, Consistency, SOHO Notes, PCalc, and iCal.
> I did
> just realize I was using a beta version of drag thing, so I
> downloaded the
> latest version and have switched to that. No idea if it helps any.
>
> As I mentioned previously switching to a space running Mulberry Mail
> via
> ctrl-arrows seems to cause the problem a lot. Since Mulberry is now
> open
> source, I downloaded the source and compilied via XCode on Leopard.
> That
> seems to have made the problem rarer, but it still has occured a few
> times.

No Growl here. No Audio Hijack. No Mulberry (any more, I tried an
early version which drove me away--it improved later).

Prime suspect in my mind would be Growl, as it likely insults the
Window Manager now and then. But the Audio Hijack helper might, as
well, so it's on the suspect list. And Mulberry is rather old code
and almost certainly wasn't in Apple's test suite. But Mulberry isn't
present on all machines with the problem. (Growl might be; Audio
Hijack would seem less likely to be.)

Perhaps my memory is coming to match the average Port Ludlow memory
that I don't notice missing windows? (We don't say "Senior Moment"
here; we say "Port Ludlow Moment".)

I suppose I could install Growl on the most sandboxish machine I have
(the Macbook). Is Growl easy to get rid of?

   --John

On or about 12/8/07 3:17 AM, thus spake "David Weintraub"
<qazwartgmail.com>:

> If your application has windows on
> multiple spaces, you can't use the Cmd-Backtick to flip between the
> application windows

Agreed. It's hard to decide if this is a bug or not, though. The windows are
all listed in the app's Window menu, so you *can* get to them. You could
argue that the fact you can do it one way but not the other is an
inconsistency that feels like a bug; but you could argue the opposite, that
removing windows in a different space from the command-backtick cycle is the
Right Thing to do, to keep you from switching spaces accidentally, and there
is no loss in functionality because you can get to the other windows if you
really want to, using the Window menu.

The same thing is true if you use Witch, in a different form: windows in a
different space from the one you're in aren't available to Witch.

From this I conjecture that the way Spaces works is by literally removing
windows from the onscreen list. Windows in a difference space aren't
available to Witch because in a very real sense they do not exist, any more
than a closed window exists. (A closed window is not necessarily released
from memory, because you might want to open it again - that is how a prefs
window often works, for example.) But it is not in *exactly* the same sense
as a closed window, because a closed window does not appear in the app's
Window menu. My guess is that the app just "remembers" the window - since it
has not officially been closed (by the user), it stays in the Window menu.
m.

On 12/8/07 at 3:17 AM, qazwartgmail.com (David Weintraub) wrote:


>Which brings up another minor bug: If your application has windows
>on multiple spaces, you can't use the Cmd-Backtick to flip between
>the application windows.

What I see happening s cmd-backtick cycles through the windows
of the application in the active space. While this may not be
your desired behaviour, I think this is working as intended and
isn't a bug.

--On December 8, 2007 3:17:04 AM -0800 David Weintraub <qazwartgmail.com>
wrote:
> Which brings up another minor bug: If your application has windows on
> multiple spaces, you can't use the Cmd-Backtick to flip between the
> application windows. I'll have to see how Expose handles the issue of
> application windows being in multiple spaces when you press F10 or F9.

Expose works normally in the current space, only windows in the current
space are displayed. One neat feature is to hit F8 to display all spaces,
then hit Expose F9. Each displayed space will Expose, allowing you to see
all windows in all spaces. Works really well.

Kevin

On Dec 8, 2007, at 3:17 AM, David Weintraub wrote:

> Actually, it's a little stranger than what I first said. Imagine a 2 x
> 2 layout where spaces 1 & 2 on top and spaces 3 & 4 on the bottom.
> You're in Space #2, with Windows "A" and "B". You drag window "A" to
> the top, and Window "B" bounces down to Space #4.
>
> Something tells me this isn't a "feature". Still, I do like spaces. I
> have pinned both Finder and Pathfinder to all spaces, Mail to Space #2
> and Safari to Space #3. Clicking on a link in Mail automatically
> switches to Space #3, and I can easily flip back to Space #2 (via
> Cmd-Tab) and go back to Mail. This keeps my screen uncluttered and
> Windows easy to find.


But it is not how it has worked on Leopard for me. Dragging to the
top of space 2 and pausing accomplishes nothing other than a brief
rest. Here. (Just tried, as I *expected* it to do what you said.)
(I use the default 2x2 matrix.)

   --John

On or about 12/9/07 10:19 AM, thus spake "Spoolman Nancy"
<nancspoolman.com>:

> I liked Spaces, too, but it is not always as useful as one thinks. I
> went and assigned my main apps to different spaces. However, in my
> work I often need to write up a ticket of what's happening step-by-
> step. So, I need different apps open. Sometimes I'm typing up
> directions for secretaries or teachers. I have Appleworks and I'm
> using Firefox. OK... I can drag them together. The next time I might
> be sending an email so I have Firefox up and email, or Safari and
> email. Or, sometimes I have Filemaker Pro, Appleworks and Firefox up
> as I need to refer to all of them. I am continually switching apps to
> the space I'm needing it. I even tried putting the three apps I
> "thought" I used most together in one space, but found out I'd
> forgotten Excel.

Yes, I'd really describe this as a misconception about Spaces. Spaces is
about windows, not about apps. Its whole purpose is to cut across the "app"
division and bring together windows needed for a particular project or
activity at this moment. Thus, assigning main apps to different spaces was
probably a mistake from the get-go. m.

On 8-Dec-2007, at 04:17, David Weintraub wrote:
> Actually, it's a little stranger than what I first said. Imagine a 2 x
> 2 layout where spaces 1 & 2 on top and spaces 3 & 4 on the bottom.
> You're in Space #2, with Windows "A" and "B". You drag window "A" to
> the top, and Window "B" bounces down to Space #4.

That's something unique either to a 2x2 setup, or your machine. I
have a 3x3 setup, and mail is in Space #3 (upper right) I can drag to
the left edge to move a window to space 2, and I can drag to the
bottom to move to space 6. I cannot drag to the top or the right.

> Something tells me this isn't a "feature". Still, I do like spaces. I
> have pinned both Finder and Pathfinder to all spaces, Mail to Space #2
> and Safari to Space #3. Clicking on a link in Mail automatically
> switches to Space #3, and I can easily flip back to Space #2 (via
> Cmd-Tab) and go back to Mail. This keeps my screen uncluttered and
> Windows easy to find.

Keep in mind you can also use ^-# to switch to a specific space.

> Which brings up another minor bug: If your application has windows on
> multiple spaces, you can't use the Cmd-Backtick to flip between the
> application windows. I'll have to see how Expose handles the issue of
> application windows being in multiple spaces when you press F10 or F9.

Exposé behaves at it always has, but it also works within Spaces. Hit
F10, then hit F8.

> Some features that are missing in Spaces:
>
> * Ability to set a window to appear on all desktops or one particular desktop
> via the mouse.
>
> * Show the spaces layout on the dock
>
> * Ability to name spaces instead of just numbers.
>
> * Set different desktop patterns for each space.

You Control Desktops will do all of the above.

> I don't have nearly as many third party "must have" "improvements" to
> Mac OS X as many people do (nothing from Unsanity, for instance).
> That may or may not have anything to do with my good fortune.

So far, none of Unsanity's haxies have made it to Leopard, so you have to
find another whipping boy. (In my experience under Tiger, using several
Unsanity haxies, I NEVER found any problems I encountered--often blamed on
the haxies--actually stemmed from those haxies.)

It IS encouraging to hear that someone has been using Spaces without
vanishing windows. And you may well be right that the problem is a bad
synergy between Spaces and some one or more third-party apps. But not, in
this case, Unsanity's.

At 4:12 PM -0800 12/11/07, Matt Neuburg wrote:
>> I liked Spaces, too, but it is not always as useful as one thinks. I
>> went and assigned my main apps to different spaces. However, in my
>> work I often need to write up a ticket of what's happening step-by-
>> step. So, I need different apps open. Sometimes I'm typing up
>> directions for secretaries or teachers. I have Appleworks and I'm
>> using Firefox. OK... I can drag them together. The next time I might
>> be sending an email so I have Firefox up and email, or Safari and
>> email. Or, sometimes I have Filemaker Pro, Appleworks and Firefox up
>> as I need to refer to all of them. I am continually switching apps to
>> the space I'm needing it. I even tried putting the three apps I
>> "thought" I used most together in one space, but found out I'd
>> forgotten Excel.
>
>Yes, I'd really describe this as a misconception about Spaces. Spaces is
>about windows, not about apps. Its whole purpose is to cut across the "app"
>division and bring together windows needed for a particular project or
>activity at this moment. Thus, assigning main apps to different spaces was
>probably a mistake from the get-go.

Perhaps a new keystroke set is needed, because one of the things that
annoyed me about spaces and caused me to turn it off was when I used
Cmd-Tab I'd switch spaces when I just wanted to switch to another
application in the space.

However the keyboard is getting kindof full of reserved keystrokes...
so who knows?

~Nick
http://www.inmff.net

On or about 12/27/07 6:02 PM, thus spake "Nicholas Barnard"
<nickinmff.net>:

> At 4:12 PM -0800 12/11/07, Matt Neuburg wrote:
>>> I liked Spaces, too, but it is not always as useful as one thinks. I
>>> went and assigned my main apps to different spaces. However, in my
>>> work I often need to write up a ticket of what's happening step-by-
>>> step. So, I need different apps open. Sometimes I'm typing up
>>> directions for secretaries or teachers. I have Appleworks and I'm
>>> using Firefox. OK... I can drag them together. The next time I might
>>> be sending an email so I have Firefox up and email, or Safari and
>>> email. Or, sometimes I have Filemaker Pro, Appleworks and Firefox up
>>> as I need to refer to all of them. I am continually switching apps to
>>> the space I'm needing it. I even tried putting the three apps I
>>> "thought" I used most together in one space, but found out I'd
>>> forgotten Excel.
>>
>> Yes, I'd really describe this as a misconception about Spaces. Spaces is
>> about windows, not about apps. Its whole purpose is to cut across the "app"
>> division and bring together windows needed for a particular project or
>> activity at this moment. Thus, assigning main apps to different spaces was
>> probably a mistake from the get-go.
>
> Perhaps a new keystroke set is needed, because one of the things that
> annoyed me about spaces and caused me to turn it off was when I used
> Cmd-Tab I'd switch spaces when I just wanted to switch to another
> application in the space.

This is definitely a major problem - I'd call it a bug. If you command-tab
to switch applications, or in any other way switch applications, and the
application you switch to has any windows open in the space you are
currently in, then one's intuition is that you should *not* be rocketed into
a different space. But that is exactly what does happen, all too often, in
an utterly unpredictable way.

As I've said before, I solve the problem with Peter Maurer's Witch, which
lets me switch easily among all the windows of all the apps open in *this*
space (and no others).

http://www.manytricks.com/witch/

It's really just a matter of learning a new habit.

m.