multiple workspace

[Norman Richards]

On Jan 7, 2005, at 9:57 PM, DV Henkel-Wallace wrote:

> However this is despite some of the new ideas being not fully baked 
> (conceptually).  Workspaces are an example.  Do you remember the move 
> from Finder -> Multifinder?  That was a big conceptual leap (and one 
> that many people still have trouble with!) even though the working 
> model was already well understood in the research community.  But it 
> took the Mac to introduce it to the PC world.

No - I don't remember it because I was a UNIX guy who had been used to 
multitasking for quite some time.  I never understood why anyone would 
want to use a system where you could do one thing.  And it certainly 
wasn't anything new in the PC realm.   The Amiga, for one, did it long 
before and much better.

> Omniweb incorporates two ideas which are still largely alien to the PC 
> (Windows and Mac) world.  One is inherent to browsers: the idea that 
> the document is independent of the application.  But the other is that 
> of an "activity" or "workspace."

Again, being a UNIX guy for all those years, the concept of a workspace 
is nothing new.  How you guys get by without virtual desktops amazes 
me.   It's 15 year old technology at least, and the closest we can get 
to it now is expose and dashboard.  (both VERY nice, IMHO)

But to me that's a system level concern, not an app level concern.  The 
only thing that is missing is that age old concept of a project.  To 
me, a workspace looks like a project.  (think IDE if you are a 
programmer type)  It's a window with a collection of resources.   And, 
naturally you are going to potentially have multiple projects going on 
at the same time.  And, you probably don't want the other projects to 
disappear just because you changed focus.  But, even if you do we have 
concepts like expose and virtual desktops and multiple monitors to 
manage the mess.

> I think it's cool that the OW guys implemented this feature and then 
> pushed it out there.  I hope they are able to evolve it.

Very much.  I can tell you that as a developer who does a lot of web 
work, the idea of workspaces is incredible.  I can keep a collection of 
pages all together and navigate them visually.  That's amazing!  Then, 
when I'm done working with that set I can file that set of pages away 
until I need them again.  The problem is I don't just want that set, I 
want several sets available.   OmniWeb does that, but it forces all my 
other windows to go away when I try to activate another context.  Even 
worse, when I go back to my original workspace, the windows aren't 
where I left them because OmniWeb doesn't respect my own virtual 
desktop workspaces.  (it can't, because it destroys the original 
window, prohibiting the system from "remembering it")

I don't mean to rant to much.  When I look at OmniWeb I see something 
that is so close to being a perfect too for multitasking developer, yet 
the implementation of it renders it almost useless.  It's frustrating 
only because I like it so much.