virtuedesktops posts

TUAW Desktop of the Week

by David Chartier (RSS feed) on May 27th, 2007

This week's TUAW Desktop hails from Flickr user form953, who has managed to turn both Dashboard and the Dock more or less Inside Out. The iStat pro widget is running in Development Mode, which is what allows it to live on the Desktop, separate from the Dashboard. I'm not entirely sure how form953 managed to pin the Dock underneath the menubar, however; I've seen that option in one utility or another, but have never used it so I'm blanking on which apps allow for this. Here's a list of what else form953 has going on here, thankfully provided along with this shot at Flickr:

wallpaper and Disctop from mekentosj.com
iStat pro widget running in developer mode
Bytecontroller
SMARTReporter
Spirited Away
VirtueDesktops (which, sadly, is no longer being developed due to Leopard's upcoming Spaces feature)
Google Desktop for Mac
Chip Set icons

If you'd like to see your unique, functional or otherwise interesting desktop featured in our TUAW Desktops of the Week series, check out past featured desktops as well as the original post for the rules and to get an idea of what we're looking for. Then, upload your desktop screenshot to our TUAW Desktops Flickr group. We'll feature one or more desktops each weekend, giving credit to the desktop owner, wallpaper creator and any apps featured in the screenshot (if available). Keep those desktops rolling in!

Tags: bytecontroller, chip set, ChipSet, desktops, google desktop, GoogleDesktop, istat pro, IstatPro, smartreporter, tuaw desktops, TuawDesktops, virtuedesktops

Filed under: Software, Freeware, Developer

VirtueDesktops Developer Calls It Quits

by Mat Lu (RSS feed) on Mar 12th, 2007

Tony Arnold, the developer of the free virtual desktop program VirtueDesktops, on Saturday announced that he is no longer going to develop the software. Citing Leopard's forthcoming Spaces and the time necessary to work on the project as reasons, he has decided to stop development at this time. He says he doesn't want to kill the project and so invites other developers to take it up. It's sad to see development end on a nice piece of software (though, personally I thought the commercial You Control: Desktops was considerably more stable), but as Tony says, the writing was on the wall pretty much as soon as Spaces was announced at WWDC last year.

[Via Digg]

Tags: spaces, virtual desktops, VirtualDesktops, VirtueDesktops

Filed under: Software, Productivity

VirtueDesktops update brings lots of changes, bug fixes

by David Chartier (RSS feed) on Feb 27th, 2007

VirtueDesktops, the virtual desktop manager of choice, recently updated to version 0.54 beta 2 with a major set of changes and bug fixes. This forum post at cocoaforge rounds up all the changes of a few recent builds, including this latest beta. To summarize: the main gist is a lot of focus on UI tweaks and improvements. Rearranging desktops, desktop inspector improvements, crash fixes and plugs for memory leaks are all on the table.

If you want to download the new version and are interested in the details, hit the forum post for everything you need to know. Otherwise the VirtueDesktops downloads page should do you just fine, but don't forget to donate to show your appreciation.

Tags: desktops, productivity, virtual, virtual desktops, VirtualDesktops, virtuedesktops

Filed under: OS, Software, Productivity, Leopard

Why wait for Leopard? Get a virtual desktop manager now

by David Chartier (RSS feed) on Aug 10th, 2006

Mac publications are all taking a new eye to the apps and features that Leopard is 'killing,' and Dan's post about the 7 apps that Leopard kills inspired me to check out the current market of virtual desktop managers for Mac OS X. Since I'm on a MacBook Pro however, the only one I could really put through the ringer was VirtueDesktops, which is fine since it seems like a feature-packed and very capable virtual desktop manager. Hence, another post in an ongoing theme here at TUAW: Why wait for Leopard?

While we didn't get a full shakedown of Spaces at WWDC 2006, VirtueDesktops seems to offer the same functionality, with quite a few tricks up its sleeve. Barb blogged VirtueDesktops in February 2005, but it has certainly come a ways since then. It still offers a basic set of four desktops with the ability to add more, and it's very keyboard shortcut-friendly. Here's a quick rundown of the rest of this highly customizable desktop manger:

Eye candy - a wide variety of the standard Aqua transitions are available for switching between desktops. This alone is worth showing off to friends, even if you aren't into the multiple desktop thing
AppleScript-able
Extensible with plugins
Works with Growl to let you know which desktop you've switched to (you can name them for better organization and recognition)
Sticky windows and apps - you can bind apps to one desktop or another, or specify them to show on all desktops. This is handy, for example, if Mail.app is 'stuck' to a 'Communication' desktop. Clicking on Mail.app in the dock will automatically switch to the required desktop

There's even more to this virtual desktop utility, and since Leopard is taking a while to cook, why not check it out? VirtueDesktops is donationware and a Universal Binary.

Tags: desktops, leopard, leopardwait, manager, spaces, utility, virtual, virtue, virtuedesktops, wait

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, WWDC, Freeware, Leopard

7 apps that Leopard kills

by Dan Lurie (RSS feed) on Aug 8th, 2006

Phill Ryu, a man who must have some sort of direct neural interface with the Mac shareware community, has posted a list of applications which could very likely be killed off by features of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard which were announced yesterday. Seasoned OS X users will have immediately seen parallels between many of the new Leopard features and software that has been available for some time.

Most obviously, Spaces are just fancy names for virtual desktops; something that can be easily achieved by VirtueDesktops, DesktopManager, and VirtualDesktop Pro. The new application launching features of Spotlight take aim at popular applications such as LaunchBar, Butler, and my personal favorite of OS X applications, Quicksilver. With iChat, tabs kill off Chax, live presentations kill off ShowMacster, and backgrounds kill of ChatFX.

Be sure to click through to the original post for all the other apps now lining up at the unemployment window, and to see what the shareware developers themselves have to say about the announcements.

Update: Buddy'o'mine and BarCamp mastermind Chris Messina has a similar post.

Tags: 10.5, desktopmanager, developer, kill, leopard, osx, phill, phillip, ryu, shareware, virtuedesktops, wwdc

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