This is an easy trap to fall into, thinking you've solved a problem when you've actually just specialized for one use case. 45° is all it takes <i>only if</i> you use Luka's four-space configuration (in much the same way that the current functionality is ideal for a two-space configuration). This "redesign" doesn't even define how other configs would work, much less improve on the status quo. Solutions are always easy when you leave scaling as an exercise for the reader.<p>And all the solutions I see in the comments either bring back the major complaint about the existing functionality (unnatural navigational rules) or just scrap Luka's design and suggest something else.
I think Spaces is dead. I doesn’t really fit anywhere in the vision of the desktop Apple showed off in the Lion sneak peak, Apple might have decided to quietly drop it. The new fullscreen mode might take its place.<p>Spaces wasn’t mentioned in the demo at all and it would be very inelegant to just tack it on top of the concept Apple has for the desktop. I will be surprised if it is still there when Lion arrives.<p>Multitouch gestures to switch between spaces (instead of fullscreen apps as was demoed in the sneak peak) would be pretty cool but I’m not holding my breath.<p>Apple does like to drop nerdy features few people use from time to time. The only thing that gives me pause is that they also seem quite happy to keep at least some of them around. The screen corners would be one example. (Then again, screen corners don’t change the whole desktop around.)
It's not necessarily an improvement. Sure, for navigation it makes things easier in the 4 workspace situation. However if you're using expose function in spaces, you'll have to have a 3x3 grid of tiles displayed like so:<p><pre><code> oxo
xox
oxo
</code></pre>
(where x is a "space", and o is just blank). The reduction in screen use might not be worth the boost in key-based navigation (especially since in the best case, this redesign only saves you a single keystroke [moving diagonally in the current scheme]). With this 'fix' in place, you'll have screen previews that are 33% smaller than they were originally, which may very well make things difficult to find in the expose overview.
He's redesigning the arrow keys to map to screens instead of mapping to movement from the current screen.<p>The solution to a higher problem space (eg. more than 4 screens) are additional unique symbols. So if you want 8 screen use the number pad. etc. If you want 26 screens just map a screen to each letter. etc.
That's crazy. I actually set my virtual desktops up exactly as he described in VirtuaWin, back in the day.<p>The advantage he doesn't talk about directly is that if you're using a virtual window manager that doesn't have a notion of physical space (ie, it just has jump-to-desktop hotkeys, there's no "go up/down/left/right" hotkey), you can still configure it in a pseudo-physical layout using this trick by mapping each space to an arrow key.<p>Obviously it doesn't map very well to n>4 spaces, but you could always have a Zelda-style "shadow world" with a different modifier key + up/down/left/right to get 8.
As someone who uses multiple tagged desktops in Awesome on Arch Linux, but doesn't even use spaces on Mac, can anyone tell me why I should, and is it better or worse than Awesome's multiple desktops?
Or just number them. All I have to do to change "tags" (loosely analogous, but actually far more powerful...) in my window manager is whack meta-#. The user is free to visualize this however they choose...
I don't understand why switching spaces frequently is the interaction to optimize. If you are switching frequently, you are using it wrong. I've seen people running just two apps, and using Spaces to switch between them, and it's painful to watch.<p>I stopped using Spaces after a while. I find Cmd+Tab to be quite good enough.
For those who don't know:<p>defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-swoosh-animation-off -bool YES<p>restart finder.<p>No more annoying animation. This + number key bindings make it so it is as fast as xmonad to switch desktops.
This idea breaks down pretty quickly when you add more spaces. I use 9 spaces on my macbook pro and have created multi-touch swipe motions to move me in any virtual direction I want. The simpler solution is to just make the spaces an infinitely wrapping plane like playing asteroids.<p>For any one who thinks that 9 is too many spaces, back when I used lower resolution PC's I actually had a tool called JSpager that gave me 12-16 different 'spaces' and a miniview in the corner with views of the layouts in each space, and I could easily keep track of everything.
This is one of the first things I do on any new Mac:<p><pre><code> defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-wrap-arrows -boolean NO
</code></pre>
This disables the spaces wrap-around behavior, simplifying the space to an easily navigated 2x2 grid. You can always get to the bottom-left space without already knowing where you are.<p>So while it's not exposed to casual users, the author's request is already implemented in the OS.
Set the lower right hot-corner to exposé and the lower left hot-corner to spaces, and navigating around spaces and windows becomes trivial.<p>Hit both corners in sequence and you get all windows visible, and you can view or drag windows around between spaces as needed.<p>Or hit the spaces hot-corner and the four-finger swipe, if you're running with a Unibody or a Magic Trackpad, for the same view.
Pfft. All blackbox users know mousewheel-on-desktop is the One True Context Switcher!<p>Jokes aside, I can't help but feel that Spaces is somehow incompatible with the OS X application model. Because the desktop is application-centric as opposed to window-centric, it is very difficult to use an application for <i>multiple tasks</i> at once, which conflicts with the workspace-as-task model.<p>Web browsers and terminals, for example, get spun up on every workspace for various short-lived tasks and destroyed shortly thereafter. But spaces (at least as far as my 3 hours of hacking got me) insists on switching to the last workspace containing a window of the starting application, instead of placing the new window where I am <i>now</i>.
Genius. I used 4 spaces for some time and stopped using them without a conscious reason why - it just felt inconvenient switching between them. But now reading this it becomes clear why - the need to scroll through all spaces and no muscle memory of a needed move to get to specific space have developed over months of trying to use them.<p>For more than 4 spaces, it could be a grid still, because you have to look at them anyway to actually remember where you need to switch to. For 4, this is a must-have change. So it will be the same grid as used for 9-spaces setup, just without the corner and center blocks.
I've long used[0] a 3x3 layout and mapped the numeric keypad so that each number takes me to a desktop in that location. It was frustrating when Apple, for no apparent reason, removed the Fn+789uiojkl virtual numeric keypad for its laptops, but I found that KeyRemap4Macbook has a switch to make RightCmd+123qweasd do basically that, so I was able to adapt.<p>[0] Before I did 3x3 I did 2x5. Why? Because the keyboards on the Sun Ultras that we used in grad school had this 2x5 bank of keys on the side of the keyboard that I wasn't otherwise using....
I really wish Spaces would integrate with Cmd-Tab. Everytime I use Spaces, the only thing that bugs me is Cmd-Tab. If I'm on space 1, and I press Cmd-Tab, it shows <i>all</i> the open applications, which really doesn't make any sense (at least to me). If I'm on a particular space, I usually want to switch only between applications that are open in that particular space.<p>Does anyone know of any alternative to this?
to all the people worried about apple dropping spaces:
Mission Control. Mac command central.<p>Mission Control is a powerful and handy new feature that provides you with a comprehensive view of what’s running on your Mac. It gives you a bird’s-eye view of everything — including Exposé, <i>Spaces</i>, Dashboard, and full-screen apps— all in one place. With a simple swipe gesture, your desktop zooms out to Mission Control. There you can see your open windows grouped by app, thumbnails of your full-screen apps, Dashboard, and even other <i>Spaces</i>, arranged in a unified view. And you can get to anything you see on Mission Control with just one click. Making you the master of all you survey.<p>from <a href="http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/" rel="nofollow">http://www.apple.com/macosx/lion/</a><p>and i don't see how the above using the arrow keys in such a manner is superior to just using ctrl-space# for quickly switching between up to 9 spaces
You could set this up today with something like keyboard maestro. <a href="http://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/" rel="nofollow">http://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/</a> - just remap the keys. You could create 9 spaces, only use top/left/down/right, and map the arrow stroke to the command to jump to a specific space
This is one of the reasons I've never liked (and never used) Spaces. I think this would be a better solution, even if it meant making the max number of spaces be four.