Spaces window behavior: legitimate feature or bug??

[doowrehs]

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?

 

[gnasher729]

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.

Did your developer friend tell you that he is under NDA, and that if he let's you use Leopard on his machine he is in breach of his NDA, which would get his company into trouble and him fired if you give away any information so that he can be identified?

 

[Diatribe]

Did your developer friend tell you that he is under NDA, and that if he let's you use Leopard on his machine he is in breach of his NDA, which would get his company into trouble and him fired if you give away any information so that he can be identified?

Geez, don't get your panties in a bunch. It is not like he discussed super sensitive information and I am pretty sure he knows not to give out his friend's address and birth date. Besides, without people knowing more actually writing here this place wouldn't exist the way it does.

I am not sure how I feel about that functionality. If that was the last window within the space it would make sense so you're not left with an empty space. But if you actually have other apps open in that space then I can imagine it to be pretty annoying.
I will withhold any serious judgement until I have actually used it though.

 

[chelsel]

This sounds very closely related to this article I posted: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/358672/

Basically, this appears to be a (IMHO negative) effect of the OS X application-centric design. Unfortunately, if what you're saying is true it pretty much eliminates any usefulness to the Spaces concept except for very light users. You will probably be better off using fast user switching and logging in amongst different accounts... e.g. cliff_work, cliff_play, etc. of course you won't be able to share apps that would be common to those accounts, such as Mail..

Cliff.

 

[doowrehs]

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?