Spaces or Desktop Manager

I am new to macs and so far I am sold on them. The space feature is one of my favorite feature that i have discovered so far. I heard some things about a program called Desktop manager. Seems to be a similar idea to Spaces... could someone fill me in on the differences and what one would be the better option.

For starters, Spaces is a Leopard only feature. If for some reason you don't have a Mac with Leopard, then Spaces isn't an option for you. You would have to use either Desktop Manager or another program called VirtueDesktops.

Now if you DO have Leopard, first try out the built in Spaces feature before trying out a third party solution. Since you're even asking this question, I'm thinking Spaces should suffice.

Yes spaces will probably suffice. However, can you make your MacBook into a SmacBook with spaces ?

Spaces is really good. And it integrates into the system much better than any other desktop manager. For instance, when in a spaces birds eye view, you can hit F9 and invoke Expose while in that view. All your windows in all your spaces.

Even if they do make a smackbook app, I wouldn't recommend it unless one day you can get a macbook with a flash based storage. Jerking the hard drive can only result in data loss...

goobimama said:

...For instance, when in a spaces birds eye view, you can hit F9 and invoke Expose while in that view. All your windows in all your spaces....

Click to expand...

never knew that, Thanks!

goobimama said:

Spaces is really good. And it integrates into the system much better than any other desktop manager. For instance, when in a spaces birds eye view, you can hit F9 and invoke Expose while in that view. All your windows in all your spaces.

Click to expand...

Very cool! I didn't know that.

Spaces and Virtual Desktops are not exactly the same concepts.

Spaces is like groupings of windows. The dock, menu bar, desktop icons, background... all stay put. Only the windows move around. When you move from Space 1 (on the left) to Space 2 (on the right), the popup bezel makes it seem like you are being moved right to a different screen. But in actuality, every window is moved left away from you.

With virtual desktops, the viewport actually moves. When you go from desktop 1 to desktop 2, everything changes. Not just the windows. And you get some really nice core animations to too. It's very slick.

Spaces is Virtual Desktops. There are different ways of implementing virtual desktops, and spaces is one of them. Personally I'm thankful that the wallpaper and such remains the same, cause otherwise the screen has to draw an entirely new wallpaper (and dock, if it was like that) which would add to resources used. Spaces in it's current form is so smooth, that it is almost perfect.

spaces and desktop manager

Hi all, I have been using Desktop Manager for a while now (after a stint with the codetek version - dropped when it failed to support 10.4 for a while.) Anyway, I just upgraded to 10.5 and kept DM running with Spaces. I noticed that the DM view in the menubar actually lets you change the Spaces desktop. That was my one problem with Spaces -- the lack of an easy way (other than F8) to move to another desktop. It seems that keeping DM running actually gives me that. Anyone else notice that? Am I the only one who likes DM's menu-bar view?

There are three ways to change desktops in Spaces. One, you use Expose. Two, you use the icon in the menu bar. And three, you use a keyboard shortcut. The latter two options need to be enabled in the Spaces preferences pane.

Ways to change space:
-Control+arrow key. Example: Move from space 1 to 2, Control+right arrow.
-Take a window, and drag it towards the edge of the screen. The space will automatically change.
-Making apps automatically open up in spaces (spaces preference pane)
-F8 key.
- Click and hold a window, then press Control arrow to move the window to a different space.
- Use speech recognition (I just say "Gimme Space 1").
- Try out warp. it let's you move spaces by just moving your mouse to the edge of the screen.
- Spaces ticker in menubar. But that's a crappy way.

It's a shame that the author of Virtue Desktops has halted development, as I prefer it's implementation to what I've seen of Spaces (I'm not upgrading to Leopard yet until the incompatibility with Cinema4D is fixed). I'd rather have proper multiple desktops as opposed to how Spaces seems to work.

goobimama said:

- Take a window, and drag it towards the edge of the screen. The space will automatically change.

Click to expand...

Rock on, goobi

I prefer Desktop Manager to Spaces.
And I prefer DragThing to Dock.

But apple doesn't let you release these resources from the OS (like a plug-in or extension). So I don't run the utilities I prefer, in order to run a leaner OS. Sad, aint it?