Virtual Desktops
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I have been reading about some of the new features in Windows 10 and I have read that virtual desktops are going to be a thing in Windows 10. I know they have been a part of Linux OS’s for a while. Are they also in OSX?
Do you guys make use of them?
Whenever I have used Linux for my desktop I have found them quite useless. It seemed to be more effort to switch to the correct desktop than just clicking the item on the task bar.
It seems that a lot of people are excited about them but I dont really know why.
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They are also in OS X. I don’t use them nearly as much as I’d like but I think I’ll start using them more now that there’s been a huge performance improvement in El Capitan, makes switching so much nicer. I do tend to keep certain apps in full screen, which is essentially a virtual desktop just for that app.
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I use them for full screen apps. Four finger swipe is much better than clicking on the dock back and fourth and god forbid sharing the screen when you’re trying to code.
I don’t use them for just separate work spaces, although I probably should. I always have too many windows open (chrome, slack, telegram, and terminal are literally always open)
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@Almost I can see the efficiency with the swipe and keyboard short cuts but the same could be done with just one screen. Using Win + (number) to maximise or minimise the program that is relevant to (number) in the task bar.
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True, but if parallels keeps up it’s awesome gesture support in windows, then I’d prefer to have one interaction rather than swiping on mac and tabbing on windows.
Also, I like the idea of not covering things too. I’d rather swipe on or two times than tab through 15 windows to find my network settings that I used 2 weeks ago (remember, I don’t close things ;) )
Overall just a matter of preference. I think without gestures I wouldn’t care much for windows virtual desktops.
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alt+tab and Win+tab is different to Win+(number)
alt+tabbing through 10 windows is effort, wouldnt 4 finger sliding be the same amount of effort?
One keyboard short cut or one gesture would be a lot faster.
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Not a huge fan of win+number. It’s an awkward hand position, it doesn’t help when I have > 10 windows (which might be a bit abnormal, admittedly), and it makes me think about which position the program I want is in (Yes, I know it’s simple and I can look at my task bar, but it’s still an amount of cognizant effort which is general something you want to avoid when designing a UI).
4 finder sliding would be the same effort if I had one desktop per app, which I wouldn’t. Chrome and coding would each have their own since they take a lot of screen real estate. Slack, telegram, terminal would all be on the same desktop. Anything else would be on a 4th.
Plus, generally most of my time is on the web browser so if I then had code to its right, chat to its left, and everything else 2 to the left, it would be an average of like 1.5 swipes to get to what I want and a real max of 3. With tabbing it would probably have the same average, but a real max of 10. The number version would have an average of 1 and a max of 1, but takes more thought and doesn’t work with large numbers of open programs. Lastly, I think the 4 finger swipe is the most natural hand position.
