Stupid Computer Tricks: Virtual Desktops

Being a long time unix user, I am no stranger to the concept of virtual desktop, or workspaces. Amiga was the first to introduce the feature way back in the mid 80’s, and Xwindows on *nix has supported virtual desktops for as long as I can remember.

Pretty much all X window managers implement the feature, and for those of you who are unfamiliar, you can have anywhere from one to 32 desktops that are all clones of each other. The advantage of using multiple virtual desktops is that you can reduce desktop clutter or the number of applications you have minimized by having different applications running in different virtual workspaces.

An example would be, on a four workspace desktop, I would have an internet browser and an email client running on desktop one, then on the second workspace I would have another web browser window open writing this article for Connected Internet. On the third desktop I would have Photoshop or the Gimp loaded, and on the fourth desktop I would have an mp3 player running.

Sound handy? Yes it can be, but I have always found the novelty wears off quick, and the effort of running and keeping tabs on four desktops erases the benefit of having the extra real estate. My biggest gripe is that there was never a quick and fluid way of navigating desktops and switching between applications without the use of keyboard shortcuts. For those of you who are wondering what the problem with that is, I personally feel that keyboard shortcuts are a dinosaur who needs to find a tar pit, and fast.

The whole purpose of a GUI interface is to create an environment that facilitates human-computer interaction, and speeds up the whole interchange. Keyboard shortcuts may indeed be preferable to a badly designed GUI that requires to many mouse clicks or too many navigation steps to accomplish a task, but the whole point of a well designed GUI is to have intuitive features that speed up the human-computer relationship. Keyboard shortcuts require too much memorization. It’s like having to learn a hundred different dialects of a foreign language. It’s the opposite of intuitive, and it requires too much keyboard usage. The whole point of a well designed GUI is to minimize keyboard use.

Back in 2003 Apple added Expose to OS X. I personally felt, and still do, that Expose was the single greatest innovation in GUI design this decade. By a mile. To a great extent, Expose does away with the need for virtual desktops, because with the flick of the mouse I can get a good look at every application I have running and bring what I want into focus with a mouse click. Brilliant. Has since been copied, really well by Compiz Fusion on Xwindows, and poorly in Vista.

Three years later Apple introduced Spaces to OS X. Spaces integrates nicely with Expose by providing virtual desktops that can be navigated through Expose, or the old fashioned, manual way. My big gripe with Spaces is that if I have an application running on one desktop, and I want another instance of it doing something else on another desktop (like separate web browser windows), it doesn’t allow you to do so. That, and while I can switch between virtual desktops via Expose, hot corner, or toolbar, there is no clever way to drag applications between virtual workspaces. Also, the workspace view shows the applications, but not the desktop. I would prefer a snapshot of each desktop be displayed. Close, but no cigar Apple. It’s a big improvement, but I still prefer running a single desktop.

My three year old is becoming increasingly computer savvy, and I don’t mind it too much because he is learning an incredible amount of computer skill all by himself. It amazes me how well he navigates the desktop and web browser, and I didn’t teach him any of it. Of course, his computer world at 3 is pretty much devoted to the Cartoon Network website, where he likes to play flash games and watch video clips. Fine by me as long as he doesn’t spend too much time zoning out on the internet, but it also means that sometimes we compete for computer time, so I use my laptop when he’s on the computer.

For those of you have have been paying attention, you know that when I’m not using a Mac that I’m a big FreeBSD advocate. Have been for the last 14 years or so. It just so happens that I needed to put Vista on my laptop for my universal remote’s programming software, so I had to do away with FreeBSD, which at this time won’t share a hard drive with Vista because of some partition table incompatibility. So the laptop is currently dual booting Vista, which I will only use when I need to edit my remote’s functionality, and Linux Mint, and Ubuntu-based linux distribution. Why Linux Mint? I like Ubuntu but prefer green to orange, mostly. Also Linux Mint currently has the best base configuration of the current distros I test drove. YMMV, and hardware always plays a role in distro choice. My hardware likes Linux Mint. Yours may like another distro better. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Anyway, I would much rather be running FreeBSD, but Linux Mint has made my laptop tolerable during Vista’s unwelcome stay.

Anyway, I was in computer exile the other day while my three year old was using the workstation. I pulled the laptop out to do some stuff, and while I was on, pulled up the Compiz Fusion configuration tool to configure my desktop a little more to my liking. I started playing with the Cube, which is how Compiz does virtual workspaces. Imagine a 3D cube that spins vertically as well as horizontally, something like the way OS X looks when switching users. It’s a good visualization for virtual desktops, and I started editing settings. By the time I was done, I actually had a nicely configured desktop running four virtual workspaces that I found usable and liked quite a bit.

The reason it works so well using Compiz Fusion is that, like Apple’s Spaces, you can seamlessly cycle through and switch applications by using the Expose-like feature. The new catch is that you can also traverse virtual desktops by spinning the cube with a mouse flick, which is somehow a more elegant way of cruising desktops than a hot corner. The big clincher for me was the ability to assign applications to a particular desktop by simply dragging it to the one I wanted. Nice. Useful. Intuitive.

Someone finally made virtual desktops really useful. Good job Compiz dudes!

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