November 2007

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Leopard’s Spaces (that I’ve been introducing in the last couple of Tips) are very new to the Macintosh Operating System.

You may find as you work with Spaces that sometimes unexpected things happen, such as suddenly finding yourself in Space 2 when you were working in Space 4. This may be because an application you were previously working with in another Space is displaying an alert, or for some other reason.

I’m sure Apple will work these things out as time goes by, but for now, just be aware that sometimes there are surprises in store.

I like to divide up what I do between different Spaces. At the moment I have open windows for:

• my text editor, BBEdit, and System Preferences, Space 1
• my FTP program, Interarchy, and the Finder, Space 2
• OmniWeb, a web browser, Space 3
• Safari, and Mars Edit (for posting to my blog), Space 4.

It so happens I would like those various applications (except the Finder) to always open in those Spaces, so I’ve assigned them in System Preferences.

Assign an application to a Space

Go to System Preferences > Exposé and Spaces > Spaces and look down to the Application Assignments section of the window.

Click the + sign to add an application. An Open dialog appears.

Navigate to the application you want to add, select it and click the Add button. The application appears in the left hand column of the Application Assignments.

In the right hand column click on the Space, and choose the Space you want to assign the application to.

In future, when you open that application it will appear in the Space you selected. Once it’s open you can drag the window(s) to any other Space if you wish.

Every Space

Notice the Every Space option. This is specially useful for something like System Preferences (listed in the Applications folder).

If an application is assigned to Every Space it ‘follows’ you around after it’s been opened, whichever Space you switch to.

This is different from not assigning an application at all — in that case, if you open an application in Space 1 and switch to Space 2, the application remains open in Space 1.

Coming soon: Spaces: finetuning and final Tips.

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Navigate Leopard Spaces
Mac Tip #316/21-Nov-2007

In the last Tip I introduced Leopard’s Spaces, showing you how to turn it on, how to see an overview of all Spaces, and one way to move between Spaces. But of course there’s more.

Go back and look at that Tip, as it sets up a scenario I want to refer to here. In my example I had a BBEdit window open in Space 1. Space 2 was to its right and Space 3 below it.

Move windows

I suggested calling up the overview (F8) to drag a window to another Space, but there are other ways to move windows:

• if you have more than one window open for an application hold down the Shift key while you drag one window to a new Space in the overview. All the windows from that application will move to the new Space.
• grab a window by its grey title bar and start to drag it. While dragging press the key combination Control and a number key. For example to move the window to Space 2 I’d begin dragging and then press Control 2.
• drag a window as far as possible to top, left, right or bottom to drag it to an adjacent Space. Note: when you drag upwards the window itself will get ’stuck’ below the menu bar, but the cursor keeps moving. Let the cursor go all the way to the top of the screen in order to move the window.

Move Spaces

Move a whole Space by going into the overview and dragging the blue background. The Space swaps position with another Space, depending on the direction you drag.

Spaces and Exposé

Since Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) Exposé has created thumbnails of open windows. Mac Tip #127/12-Nov-2003, Expose your Desktop introduced this feature.

Now we can combine Spaces and Exposé: use F8 to create an overview of Spaces and then F9 to tile all the various windows within each Space. If you use a laptop, as I do, you will need to also hold down the fn key.

The screenshot shows my MacBook Pro screen with both Spaces overview and Exposé active. My cursor is over the Mail window so an HUD appears to tell me I have 3 messages.

[Note: a HUD is a 'heads up display'. It's the dark transparent window that appears at certain places.]

Navigate to another Space

To just go to another Space without actually moving a window press Control and a Space number. For example, Control 4 switches you to Space 4.

Or click on the Menu Bar icon and choose a Space number.

The Spaces Preferences allow you to choose various settings, including which keys to use for navigating and whether or not to display the menu bar icon.

Coming soon: ‘Attach’ a particular application to a specific Space.

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