VirtueDesktops alternative for OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
Just upgraded to Leopard and sad at the loss of VirtueDestkops? Spaces not doing it for you? Read on…
Background
When Leopard was announced Spaces was touted as the replacement for VirtueDesktops. This lead to Tony Arnold the main developer of VirtueDesktops downing tools and declaring VirtueDesktops dead.
So everybody waited in anticipation for OS X 10.5… only to find Spaces not living up to their expectations.
So why the big fuss?
With the advent of 10.5 Apple has tightened up the code such that no other Desktop managers properly work on top of Leopard. This leaves many followers of VirtueDesktops little or no choice than maybe to change their working practices to Spaces or find alternatives….
1. HyperSpaces
From the creator of VirtueDesktops comes HyperSpaces. Unfortunately this isn’t set for launch until 2008 and it also isn’t clear if it will have the same rich feature set that VirtueDesktops has.
2. YouControlDesktops
YouControlDesktops has probably the closest functionality you are going to get to VirtueDesktops. The interface for configuring things isn’t as intuitive or slick as Virtue but it’s not such a big deal since you’ll not need to use it that often.
Currently there is a beta version for 10.5 that works pretty well but there is some kinks. Namely issues with the Dock not always getting context when it should.
So in summary the solution is not perfect but it’s the best I’ve found so far. Download the beta and provide the developers with feedback, hopefully we can help push this forward.
Posted by Martin on Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Comments
Justin Jones said on Thursday, November 22, 2007:
I don't suffer from most of the problems others have mentioned when using spaces. For example, I tend to only use 3 spaces -- the first is for my general desktop stuff (Browser, IRC, IM, etc). My second space gets used for programming (Terminal, vim, etc) and the third space is sort of a "whatever" space (Photoshop, Word docs, PDFs, WoW, etc).
In my case, I tend to only use one application in one space (ie. Terminal only in Space 2), so I don't suffer that problem.
The thing that is annoying me about Spaces is when I close a window, it goes to the previously selected window (at least, I think it does), which often switches me to another Space. :(
Paul said on Friday, November 23, 2007:
I am really suffering with Spaces . . . Apple should buy out VirtueDesktops (a la CoverFlow) and
use it to "upgrade" Spaces pronto. For example, if I am doing word processing in one Space, Sys Admin in another and have Photoshop open in a third, I'd like to have a browser window available to support each of these functions as I work. The only way to do that is to run three separate browsers and assign them to the various Spaces. In VirtueDesktops I can have window-by-window control over what shows up where, even allowing some windows (e.g. Server Monitor?) to show up everywhere. Come on, Apple, help us out here . . .