2635 Just about my favorite new feature in OS X 10.5 Leopard is Spaces, which allows you to group various open application windows into multiple work environments, ergo: "spaces," and then switch among them quickly and easily. This way you can segregate different projects you have on the go, or keep certain categories of application separate from one another. The system's default configuration is four Spaces, but you can specify up to 16 in the Preferences.

Personally so far, I've found that six Spaces is the sweet spot for my purposes, and like most of the best Mac features OS features, Spaces supports a variety of ways to alternate among your Space environments. You can display a Spaces icon in the Menubar, and use its pull-down menu to switch Spaces. The number of the currently-selected Space also reads out on the Menubar icon.

You can also switch by pressing a modifier key and the number of the Space you want to select, or click on the icon of the application whose windows you want to display.

However, there is now another way to go. Warp is little freeware preference pane that allows you to use mouse gestures to switch between Spaces rather than using the keyboard or pull-down menu.

Just drag the Warp pref. pane into the Preferences Panes older in your Home Folder's Library Folder and reboot.

The Warp pref. pane allows you to enable/disable Warp, configure it to start at login, adjust the amount of activation delay, and assign modifier keys required for the mouse gesture switching to activate.

Now, when you mouse to the extreme margins of your display, Warp will switch to the adjacent Space from the one you're in.

Unfortunately, Warp documentation is minimal in the extreme, which is to say there isn't any - not even a ReadMe file, so you're left to your own devices to figure out how the program works. However, it's pretty intuitive, and the pref. pane selections are more or less self-explanatory.

Warp works fine, and I encountered no problems of bugginess. It is definitely a quicker and easier way to switch Spaces than using the Menubar menu or a keyboard shortcut. I did find that I was inclined to get too many inadvertent switches without a modifier key configured, although it's less convenient to have to press the modifier key. Whatever works best for you.

Warp is available free of charge, but donations are appreciated and assist in support and development.

System requirements:
Warp requires Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

System Support:
PPC/Intel

Free

For more information, visit:
http://www.ksuther.com/warp/

Charles W. Moore

Login   or   Register    

Name:

Email:

Location:

URL:

Smileys

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Submit the word you see below: