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Leopard Spaces

One thing that I have always loved about Unix is virtual desktops. For a developer screen real estate is paramount and in the absence of multiple monitors it is a life saver. In Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger there was Desktop Manager which I used extensively and loved. It worked great! Now with Leopard virtual desktops are baked right into the OS with Spaces. Spaces provides the same great virtual desktop flexibility with a bit of that Mac polish.

By default spaces is setup in a standard 2×2 configuration. However, in no way is it limited to this grid alone. In fact, via system preferences Spaces can be configured into a maximum grid of 4×4 giving a you a whopping 16 virtual desktops.

Switching back and forth between all of these workspaces couldn’t be easier. My preferred method is to use the keyboard shortcuts as defined in the preferences panel (CTRL Left/Right arrow keys for me). You can also switch desktops via the high level spaces overview (screen shot below), a desktop hotkey or via an optional menu bar widget.

One of the features I like best about Spaces is the ability to zoom out and see all of the desktops at once and then rearrange windows between desktops by simply dragging and dropping. In my opinion this is a killer feature.

In addition I have discovered, quite by accident, that if you simply drag a window beyond the edge of the screen it will be moved to the adjacent desktop along that side.

The one thing that I wish Spaces had was the ability to setup different desktop wallpapers on a per desktop basis so that you know where you are among all of your 16 desktops. Maybe this is a carry over for me from Unix based systems. Not having this feature really isn’t that big of a deal however since Spaces provides a menu bar widget in addition to a very nice visual indicator in a quick heads up display when switching between spaces.

All in all Spaces provides a worthy addition to Mac OS X. It is well thought out, stays out of your way and has that extra bit of polish that makes it fun to use. If you haven’t used virtual desktops before I highly recommend it and if you’re an old virtual desktop pro then you’re in for a treat.