I’d keep an eye on Hyperspaces, an app currently in private beta that presumes to tackle some of the pressing deficiencies in Leopard’s own Spaces implementation, namely:

• Conspicuous naming of individual spaces.
• Different background images for each space.

The site also mentions hue tinting of backgrounds depending on the space, but the provided screenshot doesn’t look too great yet. So we’ll see. Also of interest is the article on Cocoia detailing the thought process and creative work behind Hyperspaces’ excellent icon.

Also also of interest is the growing trend of naming websites for Mac applications like the actual file extension - Hyperspaces.app => http://hyperspacesapp.com. There are other examples of this, I just can’t think of any at the moment.

Some perceptive people have been praising Apple for a new option in the Spaces Preference Pane that substantially alters the way you can manipulate applications and focus. What essentially happens now — if you uncheck the new option in the pane with the verbose name When switching to an application, switch to a space with open windows for the application — is that if you are on a Space that does not have, for example, an open Safari window, focusing on Safari in that Space will not throw you to the next available Safari window, but stay in that Space. This is awesome, except it doesn’t seem to work with iChat.

For example:

1. On Space 1, launch iChat. Open your buddy list, and open a chat window.
2. Move the chat window to Space 2, and move to Space 2.
3. Click on iChat in your dock, or Command-Tab to it.
4. For me, this brings me back to the iChat buddy list.

In retrospect, this may be the fault of Chax, a set of extensions I use in iChat. But I don’t feel like uninstalling it to find out. Anyone else want to try?