Spaces and Dialogs

The more I use Spaces, the more of a disappointment it turns out to be. Here’s a bug that is easy to reproduce.

On desktop 1, I have Firefox open to a page with setup instructions for an e-mail account. On desktop 2, I have Apple Mail open on the configuration dialog for setting up my first account. When I Cmd+Tab from Firefox to Apple Mail, the desktop does not change, so I can’t actually see the Apple Mail configuration dialog. Trying to Cmd+Tab to any other program I have open works.

The Spaces multiple desktop support just seems to be an unpolished feature that was not ready for prime time. Under X11, I’ve had multiple desktops for years, and it’s always worked exactly how you’d expect it to work (with more configuration options than Spaces). I think Apple needs to look at the example of successfully implemented multiple desktop interfaces and re-evaluate the implementation of Spaces.