Making Leopard’s Spaces Work For You

When I first read about “Spaces” and saw the screenshots in OSX Leopard, I felt like it could be a huge potential productivity booster. Those from the Linux fold have been rotating cubes and “spaces” for quite some time – and of course when Leopard came out with it, they all chirped in to remind me, “that’s been on Linux for awhile.” Yea yea yea – but is it sold by an egomaniac who only wears black turtlenecks? Didn’t effin think so…

Anyhow, when I actually got Spaces – it ended up being anti-climatic. It didn’t really work how I thought it would (in my many pre-Leopard, about Leopard dreams) and it seemed like it was a bit buggy. I have seen many people turning spaces off, frustrated with it’s apparent shortcomings – but I am not one to let initial excitement die so easily – so I rolled with the punches for awhile. Fast forward three months and I am now moving from space to space like a Puppeteer on a powder day (sci-fi/drug connection makes reading all the better).

Organize Your Actions

For those who are using a computer for more than just checking email and surfing the web – Spaces can help boost productivity. My first inclination wasn’t right at all – I put random stuff in random spaces and was like, “cool, now what.” Since then – I have organized all of my actions on a computer into four main categories for four spaces (they may be different for everyone):

Browsing Information – Since I switched to NetNewsWire and Safari (versus good ol’ buggy Firefox) I have been able to cut out my mid-design random RSS feed checks. I used to build sites in Firefox and click “Live Bookmark” every few minutes. Now when I want to browse I have to actively switch to another space.

Communicating and Scheduling – Lumping Twitter (Snitter), iChat, Mail, iCal, and Things together allows me to communicate with people to schedule timelines and meetings.

Multimedia Management - I really like to use Handbrake for backups, yea. Oh and iTunes. Oh and covers from Amazon.com. And Netflix is nice too. Everything related to my hording of films, shows, and music goes here.

Web Design – When I am working on web design – it’s very important to be able to hyper focus or get in the zzzzone (yea, I can’t believe I am that cliché either). I keep Photoshop, Coda (of which I also recently switched), and Firefox all within the same Space as well.

There you have it – all of my related activities between the four Spaces. I would suggest playing around with it and finding the layouts you like and then sticking to them. If you stumble upon one that works particularly good – then you can go into system preferences and make sure the particular setup you like will always be the same when you start apps.

The Rules to Spaces Success

Obviously these rules are related to my own experience – I think most people, who use and like Spaces, do so in the way mentioned above. The broader goal is to get those who have tried Spaces and didn’t like it right away to give it a second chance.

1. Don’t have conflicting Applications in the same Space. For instance – if you’re trying to design something with iChat blinking at you every 30 seconds, it doesn’t belong. Try to find complimentary applications – such as Mail and iCal.
2. You don’t need to switch between Spaces very frequently (ideally), but if you do need to use “Command+Tab.” For the seasoned computer user, this is a no brainer, but I guarantee at least one person will read this and go, “I never knew you could do that.” Everyone had that day.
3. Don’t be afraid to fill out the screen in a grid that works for you.
4. Have fun!!! (I just love writing that at the end of lists, let’s keep it peppy, please.)

Conclusion

Spaces will eternally be a mystery for some people – for others it will be a godsend they can’t live without – I think it will be most useful to the multi-taskers who are doing five different things at once and have trouble working on just one thing. Personally, I was suffering from information overload and this seems to alleviate that a bit. My Spaces setup lives on a 20-inch iMac and a 20-inch Dell Flat Panel – the more real estate the better. Divide and conquer, go forth and do, yay.

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