MacResearch

With Time Machine and Spaces, Leopard has the whole space-time continuum covered. Or has it?

Spaces was for me the feature I was most looking forward to in Leopard. I have used virtual desktops for several years, and I have come to depend on this feature for a lot of what I do. When switching between different types of tasks, I simply switch desktops, where each has a different set of windows. I was really thrilled that virtual desktops were going to be part of the OS itself: no more hacks, no more little incompatibilities and workarounds, and on top of that, a beautiful and slick user interface to navigate your Spaces. One month ago, I finally installed Leopard and gave Spaces a try. But after a few days, I could not take it anymore and I had to switch back to my 3rd-party virtual desktop application... Click here for more...

The Good

Let's start with the good things. The user interface is absolutely perfect. The Exposé-like mode is great: one push on F8, and you have an overview of all your windows on the different desktops. You can easily move windows around between desktops. You can also switch desktops using various key combinations. When using those key combos, you can hold onto a window to move it to where you want. The animations and icons displayed while switching are helpful and don't get in the way. I don't have multiple monitors, but from what I read and saw about Spaces, the handling of multiple monitors appears sane and useful. The option to attach a particular application to a specific desktop can be useful and is a welcome setting. The menu bar icon is also a simple but welcome option.

One thing that surprised me is that Spaces did pick up on the virtual desktop organization I had with my current 3rd party application. After I quit the latter, and started Spaces, all my windows were organized exactly the same way. It is like Spaces knew what I wanted... Spooky!

However and unfortunately, Spaces has a number of limitations and some behaviours that quickly annoyed me and were really getting in the way of my "productivity".

The Bad

The real big annoyance is that Spaces decides to switch desktops all the time, in a way that takes me by surprise. Surprise is never good in user interface... Let me give an example. I have a Safari window in desktop 1; an hour later, I am working on a paper in desktop 3, and I need to check something on the web; I switch to Safari, and oh, surprise Spaces thinks I want to go to the window I have open in Safari, and there I am in desktop 1, all my other windows gone. Another example, where Spaces remembers window locations. In a program like Xcode if you open the Find window in one Space and then close it, and then try to open it another Space that has an Xcode project in it, spaces jumps back to the original space the window was opened in.

There are many similar situations where Spaces decides to switch you to another desktop, and in many cases, this is not what I want.

I believe Spaces should not surprise the user, and should not switch to a desktop unless it is very clear you want to switch. I can see only three cases where a desktop switch should be allowed:

• You explicitely ask for a different desktop: using one of the keyboard shortcuts or using the F8 Exposé-like mode
• You switch to an application that you have chosen to attach to a specific desktop (e.g. you might want all you Mail stuff to stay in Desktop 3)
• You explicitely select a particular window situated in a different desktop, for example if you select that window in the Windows menu, or open the corresponding document from the Finder

I also have found a number of occasions where I don't even understand why Spaces is switching desktops, and I had a few occasions where it switches twice in a row, going back and forth between desktops in some kind of crazy dance. In fact, I had a couple of times where the dance would not end, and Spaces would go in a frenzy mode of sliding desktops in and out (I had to use F8 to stop the craziness). These are bugs and may be gone in the final release, or will soon be gone.

In conclusion, I don't ask for more features or more options, just for more sanity. If you feel like me too, add your voice and refer to bugs 5293797 and 5569324 in Apple's Radar bug report system!

To finish the rant, another limitation for me is in setting the keyboard shortcuts. I like one-finger keystrokes to switch desktops, more specifically I like to be able to just push F1, F2, F3,... The only option with Spaces are key combinations with the Number keys: ctrl-1, ctrl-2, ... or alt-1, alt-2,... These key combos are OK, but I know from experience that it is also more error-prone, and I often have to look down on the keyboard to make sure I press the right combination (I had to do this in the past with another virtual desktop app). When switching desktops dozens of times a day, it makes quite a difference (bug ID 5569334 for Fn key support to switch desktops)... but I could actually live with it if the usability issue mentioned above is fixed.

I will give Spaces another chance once in a while in the future. Maybe things will get better, and maybe I just need to change my habits. In addition, after reading some of the docs for Mac OS X developers and how to support Spaces, we can expect that the behavior of the apps themselves will improve over time (e.g. for each window the developer can decide its behaviour with regards to Spaces, and obviously, you would for example want the Find window to always show up in the current Space instead of throwing you to another Space).

The Alternatives

Alternatives to Spaces are unfortunately scarce: CodeTek VirtualDesktop, Desktop Manager, VirtueDesktops, You Control Desktops. It is possible that with Leopard Spaces, these alternatives will die out (some are actually already dead or in zombie mode). Hopefully, we will have instead more alternatives, either as replacement of Spaces, or more likely, as extensions to Spaces, in particular once developers figure out some of the hidden APIs. After all, Apple has already done all the hard parts, all I need (and hopefully others) are a few tweaks here and there.

I just want to mention the one alternative I have been able to use with Leopard. It is called You Control Desktops. It has a few quirks that appear to be Leopard-specific (they were not there before), but it works otherwise pretty well.

While writing this post, I found something quite amazing, though. You can actually run You Control Desktops at the same time as Spaces! It seems Spaces and You Control Desktops somehow use a similar mechanism to switch between desktops, and to hide/show the corresponding windows. Having both running actually allows me to have custom keyboard shortcuts, desktop names, different transitions for animations,... Maybe You Control Desktops could become a Space extension with very little work from the developer!