To me, the idea of “virtual desktops” was pretty much an unknown term until Apple first demoed Spaces in August 2006. Obviously, the idea that Spaces is built upon is not a new idea, as AppleInsider has well documented. However, Apple has a renowned reputation for innovation, not invention. Apple’s clever ability to take existing ideas, but expand them and simplify them to something simple enough for mere mortals to use is well-known, and Apple definitely utilizes this talent in Spaces. Indeed, although it took a little bit of effort to get me going, Spaces certainly has begun to make my workflow more efficient, and as I continue to work with Leopard, I’m sure it will do even more to help me refine what I do on the Mac. I can easily see myself in the near future becoming a Spaces addict.

Probably for good reason, Spaces is turned off by default. It can be turned on by enabling it in the new Exposé & Spaces system preference pane, and the layout of the Spaces can be setup. Because you’re required to setup spaces of up to four rows and/or columns, and therefore the spaces must form a square, the only possible configurations are 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 12, and 16 spaces. 4 is the default number of Spaces and is probably the most reasonable number; I’d have a hard time seeing anybody needing (or even wanting, for that matter) more than 9 spaces. In System Preferences, applications can also be assigned to certain spaces. I haven’t yet tried assigning applications to certain spaces because I haven’t decided on set configurations for my spaces. Really, I’ve so far only used them to separate out my various tasks as needed.

There are numerous ways that you can navigate between your spaces. The arguably simplest way is to press the Spaces hotkey (F8 by default, or you can also open the Spaces application in the Applications folder), which opens all your spaces in an Exposé-like view, and you can click on a space to switch to it. From this view, you can also move windows between spaces, or reorder the spaces (by clicking on the blue background to drag the whole space). One thing I noticed about this view at first is that sometimes it’s hard to see windows in certain spaces when they’re overlapping, but Apple has thought that quirk through as well. If you activate Exposé after activating Spaces, or vice-versa, then Exposé happens in each of your spaces, meaning that you can see each of your windows in all of your spaces and move windows around with Exposé staying active. Really nice.

If you’re just moving between spaces, there’s some other keyboard shortcuts which you can use (I describe the default keyboard shortcuts here, but all of these are customizable). By holding down the control (ctrl) key and going around your arrows, you can move through your Spaces. If you get all the way to the right or left of your spaces, hitting the right or left key again will move you to the next or previous line, respectively, like reading a sentence. (Although this doesn’t work with up/down–once you’re on the top or bottom of your spaces, you better start moving left or right.) In Apple’s common fashion of using visuals to help everything make sense, all the windows of a particular space move away in the appropriate direction as if your screen is “panning” over to the next space, and a miniature pop-up icon shows where you are in your spaces and where you’ve just moved to. All these subtleties may seem superfluous, but they’re actually very useful for helping you keep your head on in terms of where the heck you are among all of these virtual desktops.

If arrowing around isn’t good enough for you, and you know exactly what space number you want, you can also hold down control (ctrl) and pick one of the numbers 1-9 to jump to that space. (Note if you’re in a 12 or 16 space view, those double-digit spaces don’t get this advantage.) Also available in OS X is a Spaces menu which can let you jump to the space that you select, but I personally found this not useful and turned it off. However, if you’re one of the brave souls with 16 spaces, that menu might not be such a bad idea.

Here’s another quick tip: If you want to quickly move a window from one space to another by skipping the birds eye view, you can click on a window and hold your mouse down, then use the keyboard to switch to a new space at the same time. Your window will stay with your mouse and stick to the new space that you eventually stick with.

I would say that Spaces is probably one of the best thought out features in Leopard, and in the last week and a half, I have not been able to find anything about Spaces that I don’t like. Apple has again taken what until very recently was a very geeky idea, simplified it, and made it accessible to everyone. It has helped my workflow, and I’m sure it can also do wonders for yours.

Feature Satisfaction Rating:

Be sure to check out the other articles in the Leopard Feature Presentation, occurring throughout the month of November here on Webmacster87.info.

Tags: features, Leopard Feature Presentation, Mac OS X Leopard, organization, review, Spaces, virtual desktops, workflow