Spaces window behavior: legitimate feature or bug??

Having used an early seed of Leopard on a developer friend's machine, both he and I were a little puzzled about particular window behavior we encountered whilst using Spaces - and I just wondered whether anyone here has any feedback or opinions on it.

Basically, we set up a few different spaces and then opened various apps and a few Finder windows. After having distributed these windows around the different spaces, we noticed that something quite irritating (at least to us) happened when closing a window belonging to an app that still had another window open in a separate space: the space would switch away from the one you're currently working in, to the one which contained the remaining open window. You can try this yourself; just activate Spaces and then open two Finder windows. Move one of these windows into a separate space and then close it - you should then see the workspace jump back to the one with the remaining open Finder window.

Both I and my friend found this behavior puzzling (and, quite frankly, unintuitive), because often we'd close a window - not remembering that there was another window belonging to that app open elsewhere - and then be suddenly and unexpectedly transported to another space with the remaining open window. Of course, we then had to manually navigate back to the space we were originally in in order to continue working.

Obviously, this behaviour is an extension of OS X's default window behavior which brings all the windows belonging to an app to the top level as each previous one is closed. However, in Spaces, I'm just not sure that such behavior is appropriate.

So what do you think? Is this the correct way Spaces should function, or is it a bug which hampers productivity?

 

Hi again,

Thanks for your replies everyone. Gnasher729 - I'll ignore the rather histrionical and accusatory tone of your post. Suffice to say I and my friend work for the same company, are both well aware of the stipulations of the Leopard beta NDA, and - to be quite clear - in posting here I have discussed only Leopard functionality that has been widely and publicly documented by Apple itself.

Anyway, to get back on topic... @Diatribe - no, unfortunately this behavior is not limited to closing the very last remaining window in a space; it occurs when you close the last present window of a particular app, regardless if there are windows belonging to other apps still open. It honestly is quite irritating at times... And thanks for your reply also, Cliff. I read your other thread and can see why you might find the way windows in OS X work a bit odd at first. I thought so too when I switched, but I've since gotten used to it (and perhaps now even favor it!). I guess it just comes down to personal preference and individual habit.

What's odd to me is the way this same behavior has seemingly been allowed to affect Spaces. And that's really why I'm posting this: to see if I'm just missing something and this is actually the way Spaces is intended to function, or whether Apple neglected to consider this behavior and it should be brought to their attention accordingly. Thinking more about, I just can't believe that Apple deliberately implemented it this way, since it effectively means that you are expected to confine each app to running only in a single space.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this?