My favorite feature of Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) is Spaces. On Tiger, I had developed the habit of “hiding” an application before switching to a new one. This helped to reduce interface clutter. On the Mac, it’s easy to layer many apps on top of each other and I tended to get lost. Now, with Spaces, I can assign apps to particular “virtual desktops” and by switching, I move to that desktop and only see the apps for that particular view. It’s perfect, just how I want to work! No more hiding! I have a Space for browsing, one for mail & calendar, one for media and one for miscellaneous.

What I quickly found missing was a way to have something span 2 or more Spaces. For example, I want my instant messaging client (Adium) to be available from anywhere. Also, I have found that I’d like to have Finder windows move with me. I’d hoped it was possible, and frankly I should have just looked a tiny bit closer. I honestly feel a bit silly that someone at the Apple store needed to point it out (though he too wasn’t aware of the feature until he looked). Under the Spaces System Preference, you can assign an application to “Every Space”.

Adding most apps is easy, just browse through your “Applications” folder. For the Finder it’s trickier, you need to drill into “Macintosh HD > System > Library > CoreServices” and select “Finder.app”.