Spaces: revised

[Gregg]

Anyone else out there with a Leopard running loose trying to tame it with Spaces?
I set it up and tried it for about 10 minutes. It's now unchecked, and will remain so.

Sounds like a good idea: separate your open documents by application so when your desktop gets too cluttered, you can more easily find a document you want to bring to the front. But I quickly discovered that in so doing, the other apps don't just "fall" to the back, they disappear!

This is not good. I want to see the Calculator in the background when an Excel spreadsheet is front and center. Spaces makes that impossible.

Maybe it's time to find out what Expose does....

[Gregg]

Upon further review, I think it might be possible to include more than one application per "Space". But, I read that tip after shutting down last night....

[pendragon]

Gregg,

MacWorld published (yesterday) several tips re assigning programs to Spaces.

Perhaps therein lurks a bit of joy for you-

[Gregg]

I should soon be getting my first complimentary issue of MacWorld!

[Xairbusdriver]

I also "played" with Spaces for a while. But since I usually only have three or four apps running at the same time and needing to interact with all of them at the same time, it didn't appear that Spaces offered anything useful for me. Perhaps others who need several different sets of apps running could find more use for Spaces. For this simpleton, it doesn't do much. And, yesy, you can have one app in several or all screens. But if I did that, it would be rather redundant. YMMV, of course.

[Gregg]

I was bad.

I didn't tell my wife I was setting up Spaces. (Although I could've and she wouldn'ta known what I was talkin about.) So tonight, she says, "What's the deal with this four-box thing? It keeps coming up and I didn't do anything."

I told her she should get hired on at Apple to help them name things, except that you can make more boxes...

[Gregg]

My new "issue" with spaces is that it is inconsistent.

I noticed that with only one of my four quadrants "occupied" that the finder windows appeared in another "Space". Ok, fine. I have designated different applications for only three Spaces.

Yesterday, the finder windows were sharing a Space with Safari, and the fourth Space was unoccupied. I thought, "hmmm" (very profound, I know) and proceeded to switch the Space Safari would occupy. That seemed to clear up the unwanted co-habitation.

Today, the finder windows have migrated to the Space I moved Safari to yesterday, and the Space they both occupied then is unoccupied now! I was told by an Apple support tech (when I called about something else, I threw in a "bonus" question) that I could not assign the Finder to a Space. I believe him, because I don't see a way to do that in the preference pane. (or is it pain?)

Is there a way to get it to do what I want (keep a Space open for Finder windows) or do I have to put up with a Spacy Spaces Schizophrenia?

[Mayo]

Ummm, I may be going out on a limb here but Spaces (its name when it was under development at Apple was "Spacey"...) is beginning to sound like more trouble than it is worth...

Gregg, I appreciate you blazing a trail for me through the Leopard-filled jungle.    I am learning what to avoid without having to go through the pain of learning it first-hand...  

[Gregg]

It takes some getting used to, that's for sure. When activated, a click on the desktop behind an open application window does not[/u] bring the Finder to the front as it did in OS9, and I assume earlier versions of X, nor does that occur when you close an application from "within a Space". It's an elegant concept, but probably needs further development.

[Xairbusdriver]

Problem: Can't force "Finder" to stay in one 'space'
Reason: The Finder must always be usable in any window, whether a 'space' or a plain desktop. Too many things rely on Finder to block its use in any space. But you don't have to have a Finder window open in any space or Desktop. But I would really hate to be locked out of access to Finder, anywhere! But that 'problem' is not why I don't use Spaces, I just don't see a need in my normal computer use.

QUOTE

a click on the desktop behind an open application window does not bring the Finder to the front as it did in OS9

Actually, the Finder does come to the 'front' in that it becomes the active application. Check the name of the current 'front' application (right next to the Apple menu).

What does not come to the 'front' is any currently open Finder window. However, using the command-tab method does bring the 'front-most' Finder window as well as the 'Finder' in front of anything else on the screen. As with most generalizations, of course, there are exceptions. Help windows will still float in front of any application windows, including the Finders.

Frankly, I never noticed the trait you mentioned since I have always either clicked on a Finder window that might be visible. Or, if none were, I just command-tabbed to the Finder, which is always running. I'm just lazy, I guess, but I hate to leave the keyboard and reach for the mouse and vice versa.

[Gregg]

Jim, you're right. I should have clarified that it's the open Finder windows I'm referring to. I don't know why they "jumped" from one Space to another. I want to be able to define where they will appear. But, I don't think that's possible.

What is also different now is that when you do bring the Finder windows to the front, the other things that are open disappear rather than being visible, but behind the windows. Maybe that's only if Spaces is active, I don't remember, and I'm not taking the time to test it now...

[krissel]

Sounds like you might want to make more use of Expose to show the desktop and/or windows.  I'm not sure how it works with Spaces but I find it invaluable for finding open windows and getting a clear view of the desktop.

[Gregg]

kris, as far as I can tell, in Leopard, all Expose does is let you set "hot corners" for screen saver, sleep, or wake up. But I'll look a bit more closely when I get back to my Mac.

[Xairbusdriver]

Those corner prefs are just that, preferences. But Exposé still does the same things it did in Tiger (and probably Panther, if if was available back then.

Function key 9 reduces the size of all visible windows so you can find them easier.
Function key 10 highlights the front-most window and masks all the rest of the screen. Not sure what the point is in this.
Function key 11 clears all windows from the screen (actually pushes them almost off the screen) so you can see the whole Desktop. Helps when you know something is on the Desktop but can't get to it with all the windows normally visible. My wife finds this invaluable because almost everything is saved to the Desktop!

You also have a choice of requiring the use of the "fn" key for the above actions and thus allowing the function keys to do their "normal" Screen brightness, sound and DVD controls. I decided to do it the other way around and require the "fn" key when I want to control those same controls thus allowing just the three function keys to use Exposé. Your choice. Depends on what you use the keys for most, Exposé or screen and sound controls...

[Gregg]

Of course, the function keys; including F12 for Dashboard. But then, you can assign any function key to each of the four.  I wonder what would happen if you tried to assign two of them to the same key?

None of them do what Spaces is supposed to do, which is separate things the way you want them. Right now, Spaces is showing Finder windows in three of the four quadrants. I've never seen that before. There seems to be no way to control where Finder windows will appear.

I don't know what the other things are for on the right hand side of the Expose pane. Mouse button 5???