Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am pleased to introduce my new friend on OS X… Space!
Everything you need to know can be summed up in a couple of screenshots:
1) The first screenshot is of virtual workspace “1″. That’s me writing this blog entry. Mozilla browser for OS X, a terminal in the background and irc behind that. Notice “Space” running in the bottom corner with the darkened first pane.
2) Keep in mind that both of these screens exist on my ibook concurrently! If you squint you can see I’ve made seven workspaces to choose from. Here’s a pic of virtual workspace number two that I’m using to do some blogging:
Essentially, you can have as many workspaces as pleases you, keep tasks seperate, and it’s easier than alt-tabbing between apps. You’re alt-tabbing between tasks with a click on the workspace of your choice!
I was going to take a screenshot of “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” playing in the third workspace, but “Grab” wouldn’t take a screenshot with the DVD software running. Trust me. It was playing without problem.
I’m feeling the love.
Sweet. No?
A commercial alternative
I think the Virtual Desktop works better than Space. But, this is not free
http://www.codetek.com/php/virtual.php
Virtual Desktop
One advantage of Virtual Desktop over Space is that different windows of an application can be open on different desktops. Unfortunately that per-desktop window association is lost by hiding/unhiding the application. There are other minor anomalies in Virtual Desktop, but overall I prefer it to Space. And both are primitive compared with X11 window managers.
Virtual Desktop
I've been reminded many times to be patient with open source development in OS X. Taking that advice I've checked out space's bug list (which functions much much better than a task manager or 'todo list' in many cases): http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=118625&group_id=18625&func=browse
I'll bet on space becoming all that you want & more.
DVD Screen Grabs
If you want to get screen grabs of DVDs on OS X, then VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/) is the best solution.
I think it's super-whack that Apple's DVD player doesn't allow this.