Space.app - multiple desktops

Well, that didn't take long!

That seemed to me to be one thing that was sadly missing from Apple's finder.

Now, to try it out...
 
Well, all it really seems to do is batch hide/unhide apps. Which is a handy thing, but not really multiple desktops.

So, you can't have one TextEdit window open in one workspace, and another open in a second, since you can't hide/unhide individual windows, only the entire app.
 
One of the keys to using multiple applications efficiently is being able to see them. Virtual screens defeats this. I find them unproductive especially in X11.

Being able to scale windows on the other hand sounds more useful, and possible in Quartz. You could have all background windows scaled 50% until your mouse hovers over them.
 
Strobe --

A lot of people find virtual workspaces very useful. Just like a lot of people find a desktop littered with drives and files useful. People think in different ways, and that needs to be respected. There's really no reason to suggest that other people's workflows are somehow improper because they aren't how you work. This is the sort of paternalistic thinking that marred many MS products for a long, long time. We all should have the option to choose how we want to work.

Additionally, most modern virtual workspace managers have little nav panels that show a mini-preview of each desktop so you can see at a glance what windows are open. (fvwm and gnome both have this feature). So not being able to see the apps shouldn't be an issue with the right software.
Further, I must take issue even with the thought that not being able to see an app's window makes it difficult to use effectively. Good god, have you never used the "hide" feature in MacOS? Hidden apps still show up in the process menu or dock, and they're just as easy to switch to. A good virtual workspace manager could just switch to whatever desktop is appropriate when a user clicks the dock icon of an offscreen program. (Though what to do if an app has differnt windows on different virtual displays, I am not sure...)

Zach
 
This sounds great!!!

Wouldn't it be cool though, if instead of having the semi-transparent selection window we'd have an icon in the dock from where you could switch between the virtual screens.

...which raises another question: can docked icons communicate mouse clicks back to applications ????
 
Supiter - That would be cool, wouldn't it? You could have all sorts of control-strip type apps in the dock, like one whose icon is a volume slider, etc.

I'm not sure about icons being able to transmit to apps what x-y coordinates of the icon got clicked. If that's not possible, you ought to be able to have one docked icon per desktop, and let each icon send a different message to the app, like executable applescripts might.
 
Hello,

I made a small improvement to my copy of Space (that just sounds weird). Space allows better use of the screen on my iBook. Unfortunately the Space window is HUGE. I openned the app's NIB file and changed the sizes of the buttons and window. The buttons are now 50x25 pixels and in a straight line.

The edit is simple in the quirky Interface Builder supplied by Apple. If anybody wants I can email out the NIB file.

Jove
 
Originally posted by jove
I openned the app's NIB file and changed the sizes of the buttons and window. The buttons are now 50x25 pixels and in a straight line.
Click to expand...

That's what i did too. The day it came out.
It's now fulltime open in the right corner of my screen, the window being the same size of a docked item.

Very usefull, but i still have to get used to not switching by the dock, but by pushing the buttons. But that's just because that has become a default thing for me to do.

DJ
 
hmm, question, i just resized my window and went into the preferences and adjusted the number of buttons vertically and horizontally to make the window nice and small...i also increased the transparency there. so my question is did changing the nib file result in anything different? is it even smaller? i know the size of the window was still liminted to a min size but imo my window is pretty small...

 
hmmm.. Has anyone tried changing the interface completely and using something like a popup menu instead of the buttons? Just drag the menu in and connect it's items up to wherever the buttons are connected to? Or are the connections set programatically?
 
Space .6 is now out, and he's cleaned it up a little. It has allowed me to clean up my windows a bit, but the fact that I can't have multiple instances of an app open across different desktops does make it more limited than multiple desktops in X11.

I've also emailed the author suggesting that he make it somehow bind to quickkeys so that we can easily switch between desktops. I'm not sure how this could/will be implemented with up to 16 or 25 desktops.

I love the fact that even though we're still in the beta stage of a new OS, that all of these great apps that we've never before been able to have on the mac are coming out.

 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top