48-Hour Days

Last night Bridget and I got to talking about some of our favorite things on OS X. The conversation came around to Spaces, as I think it usually does when you are talking about Leopard. Spaces and I have had an on-and-off relationship ever since the first developer’s seed hit my hard drive. I’m very anal and the idea of organizing the vast number of windows I have open appealed to me.

When I first gave Spaces a go I was really excited. I had briefly tried a few free apps, but they had some bugs and it wasn’t feeling right. Spaces was quick, smooth, and cool. But I think I approached it in the wrong way. I started putting apps in their own space so that I wouldn’t be distracted. Pretty soon, I found myself flying around trying to figure out where the hell I put that text editor. That was when I threw up my hands and gave up.

It is a year or so later and I’ve been reading The Productive Programmer, which extols the virtues of virtual desktops. I wasn’t totally convinced, but I gave it another go. This time, though, I thought about how I wanted to use Spaces before I actually set it up. So far, it is working out pretty well. There are a few more features I’d like to see in Spaces to help round things out, but I think I’ll stick with it for a bit.

The trick seems to be to really think about how you work and figure out what tasks belong with others. Some things—like checking e-mail, instant messaging, and Twitter—naturally go together. I’ve got a “space” designated for communication and it includes Mail.app for work e-mail, Gmail (a Fluid app) for personal e-mail, Syrinx, and NetNewsWire. Growl lets me know, briefly, what’s coming in so I can either ignore it or respond to it. To make that process even easier, I’ve added all of my work contacts to Address Book with photos. Now, when Growl pops up to tell me there’s an e-mail, I know at a glance if the message is from my boss or from a co-worker who only forwards jokes.

Coding is something that I much prefer to isolate from everything else. So, TextMate gets its own space. The only other things allowed in that space are a Fluid app that I use to browse internal documentation, AppKiDo, and Preview with PDF documentation.

Testing gets a space as well. There I have a saved configuration of Terminal windows that I use to upload, compile, and watch logs. I also have Firefox here because I’m testing web applications.

The testing space is located directly below the coding space, so it is really simple to bounce between the two. I thought moving back and forth would bother me, but it really doesn’t. These are actually two different states of mind for me, so having a visual change is good.

Another space is designated for research. This is where I keep EagleFiler and Safari.

I have six spaces configured altogether. One of the last two spaces has Curio with brainstorming and test scripts (really more checklists) and the last one is just a utility one. Usually, I put Photoshop and InDesign there when I’m working on graphics.

I highly recommend using the Preference Pane for Spaces and specifically assigning applications to individual spaces. I also highly recommend that you make some applications available in all of the spaces. I have both Finder and Adium in all spaces. I originally put Adium in the communications space, but I found it annoying to have to “carry” a chat window with me when I switched around.

You should also learn the keyboard shortcuts. You can use the defaults or change them, but whatever you do use them. Using that little menu-bar thing to switch is just not productive.

So far, this is all working out pretty well. I have noticed some applications don’t play too well with Spaces and that can get annoying. I don’t know if that is a problem with the apps or with Spaces, though. But, on the whole it is working well.

There are two things that I am really, really hoping for in Snow Leopard. First, the ability to name spaces. I’d like to see those names pop up briefly as I’m switching between spaces, and when I view all of my spaces. I’d also like to be able to set different desktop backgrounds for different spaces. Even if it is just different colors, so I know coding is blue and communications is green, etc.

One feature I really dislike and wish I could turn off is the diagonal navigation. If I’m in the top left-hand space and I accidentally hit the ctrl-left arrow, it will swoosh me to the bottom, right-hand space. This is confusing and annoying. I’d much prefer that it just didn’t switch at all, like it does if you are on the top row and you hit ctrl-up arrow.

Spaces and I are still working on our relationship, but this time around things seem to be going well.

Posted on Saturday, September 13th, 2008 at 11:24 am
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