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The way that I use workspaces might be helpful in explaining their usefulness. I dedicated one workspace to each application and run that application maximized
by politician 4y ago
The way that I use workspaces might be helpful in explaining their usefulness. I dedicated one workspace to each application and run that application maximized in the workspace. So: email, slack, calendar, browser, vscode, terminal, each in their own workspace. I will actively reorder the workspaces depending on where my focus is at the moment. For example, when programming I make the terminal, browser, and editor workspaces adjacent. However, when dealing with management situations, I’ll bring slack, calendar, email, and the browser together.
Full screen applications, adjacent workspaces, and a simple left or right swipe to switch workspace allows me to find relevant apps using our fast spatial reasoning wetware and avoids the problem of having to context switch into a hunt for the right window mode.
- pluc 4y agoWhy bother having apps you need in a given context be in a separate workspace instead of, say, tiling them so you can look at them all at once? I have one monitor for Slack/shells and one monitor for browser/IDE.. I see everything without needing to touch a thing
- politician 4y agoTiling can work if you have a large enough screen. Consider, however, folks that use a larger font size to reduce eye strain and work on a smaller laptop screen for portability. Also, there's a lot to be said for arranging your work area for focus and productivity -- eliminate unproductive pixels. If I was 22 years old and had a large wraparound gaming monitor, then a tiling approach would probably work well. Truly, that approach did work for me when I was in my 20s. I'm still pretty interested in the VR office idea, but haven't bit bullet on it yet.
- pluc 4y agoI actually hadn't considered laptops at all, since even those are usually hooked up to multiple monitors in work scenario but you have good points both on the screen and font sizes!
- fsckboy 4y agolet's say you have a set of apps for a given context tiled on your screen, a shell or two, debugger, ide, editor, webpages for documentation... now you want to look at a different context with the same windowing complexity. You just switch to a different workspace and it's all laid out for you. Then you can go back. How would you accomplish that without workspaces?
- pluc 4y agoI get that use case, but I haven't seen the need for a different context with the same windowing complexity. I'm not sure I would want a set of windows I can confuse with another? Maybe for working on different branches/environments or when running complex infrastructure diffs?