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Virtual Desktops for Mac OS X
TexTex writes "Riley Lynch has released Space.dock, which brings multiple desktops to Mac OS X. He's provided the code and binaries through SourceForce.net.
It runs pretty well for being a 0.7 release and sure beats hiding all your applications and just opening the one you'd like." This is a cool little program. I usually question how much I really need virtual desktops, but I never fail to use them when I have them available.
A second monitor has alleviated the need for virtual desktops for me. And Macs do this even better than Windows machines--or at least they used to.
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this would be great to run a third display off of a second computer, as my powerbook g4 only has support for 2 displays- supposedly there's some support for this in OS 9 as an add-on app, but lets you put apps on a grid in a window on the main screen...
how well does VNC work with virtual desktops?
moox. for a new generation.
It doesn't require any installation other than dragging it into the dock. From what I can tell, it simply hides/reveals windows, sorting active windows into interchangeable 'spaces'. You can access windows in another space by clicking on the program icon in the dock - that will bring the window forward in your current space and vacate that window from its former space. All in all a small, elegant, responsive program. Only 77kb.
I've heard it still works with the most recent OSX builds, but it only looks new because the site hasn't been updated for a year.
--
The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
Nothing bugs me more than all those classic apps hogging my perty screen and harshing my alpha-transparency terminal buzz. I use space to create a nice little corral for them. the only quirk is that apps in a given workspace will switch spaces if you bring it into focus in a different one. That drives me nuts.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
It hasn't been updated in a year.
When last I tried it, about a year ago, it didn't hide windows, but applications. Which meant that you couldn't have, say, terminal windows in more than one space. Which makes it completely useless for my purposes.
The underlying problem is that Apple hasn't released the API for the window manager, and no amount of dumping symbols from binaries, tracing, etc, seems to produce anything of value. I wish Apple would open up this window manager API, so that we can get a useful virtual desktop manager.
Yes the site and the program have some shelf-life. Riley's stated that version 0.8 will released "any day now" and has been in testing for the past few weeks. It should include a global hotkey which may make swapping between these desktops amazingly easy.
-Barkeep, a draft of your most hazardous brew, for the world is slowly stepping into focus, and I don't like what I see.
I used this for a while a year or so ago. It's a neat app, but honestly, it's really not a virtual desktop system. All it does is hide other applications. One can have the same functionality, with an easier interface using ASM and command-tabbing through applications.
Personally, I've gotten used to cmd-tab enough that that is pretty much all I use to switch between apps. If there were a true virtual desktop app for OS X (where I can have windows from different apps together on a desktop instead of all windows of one app) then I'd probably use it...
Gabriel Ricard
Space.dock does not actually change between virtual windows (as some have already noted). In essence all this program does is open and close groups of windows defined by the user.
Advantages:
- Low wastage of memory
- You can access any window from any virtual screen.
- You can close all of a projects windows, even if those windows are running different programs.
Disadvantages:
- No dragging windows between screens.
- No 'alt-arrow' to go between virtual screens.
All in all, it's definately not virtual screens like most unix people are used to, but it is small, clever, and it feels very 'Mac-like'.
There was a program call Virtual that was great. It had a floating virutual desktop bar from which you could choose which desktop you want to work with. Small representations of open windows appeared in each section of the bar. You could even drag these around to move windows from one virtual desktop to another without switching your view. You could even have a window that spanned two or more virtual desktops. Another cool feature was that the background pattern/picture was customizable for each virtual desktop, so it was easy to tell at a glance which one was active. Despite all these great features (or perhaps in part because of them), my Mac was never quite stable when I had Virtual running.
It would be great if Apple would incorporate these features into a future revision of Mac OS X, or at least open the APIs so someone else could do the work.
-MAL