Diagonal transitions

Hello,
Thanks a lot for your updated Mavericks-compatible version!
I had already suggested you (for the previous version) to add an option to disable transitions when changing spaces diagonally (or any better idea…)
Indeed, as transitions can’t be animated diagonally (this is what you had answered me the last time) it is a bit weird to have a horizontal transition when switching diagonally (for example when switching from space 1 to space 5 in a 3x3 layout).
Regards,
B. Terradillos

I think disabling transitions is not ideal - I think it would seem jerky to have some transitions and some instant switches.

Actually we completely rewrote the transitions in TS2. So I am very willing to do something about diagonal transitions. One suggestion is to do a faster horizontal then vertical transition. I’m not really sure I like this though (particularly when you go from, for instance, space 1 to 9).

For the slide transition we may be able to make a diagonal transition that works ok. Which transition animation do you use?

Hello,
To answer your question about the transition I use: I fell in love with “Inside cube” (really cool!). But this doesn’t help my diagonal problem :~(
I thinks that your suggestion to make a quick horizontal+vertical transition won’t work very well because I already set the transition speed to the fastest possible…
At least, you could perhaps make a diagonal slide transition and use it for all other non-compatible transitions?

Hi Stephen and all,

I remarked on this quite a long time ago, so I’m glad to see it’s not just me who still would like to see diagonal animations happen when switching from the end of one row to the opposite end of the next. This behaviour on Snow Leopard and earlier really helped you know where you were in your ‘space’ of spaces, and I still miss it a lot.

My preference would be for a slide animation where you see the windows on the off-diagonal spaces whizz by (or indeed the whole desktops) as you move from, e.g., space 1 to space 4 (in a 2x2 arrangement), or space 1 to space 6 (4x4). Basically, something akin to the pre-Lion behaviour. I personally only use the slide animation–the others are a bit too exotic for me–so I’m afraid I can’t really comment on how one might implement transitions for those.

I will be upgrading to Mavericks soon and try out TotalSpaces 2–I can’t imagine living without TS, because I must use it thousands of times a day! Thanks a lot for the continuing effort and a great product.

Andy

Hi Andy,

Yes, Snow Leopard flew the windows diagonally. I don’t recall how it worked when moving from space 1 to space 9 in a 3x3 config - but from what you say I guess all the windows in space 5 flew by.

But anyway, the problem for us is that in order to show you the windows for a particular space, we actually have to switch to that space before we do the animation. And switching spaces takes time which makes it slower (and it also mucks up your cmd-tab active application history).

So I would not want to do a transition where we showed the space that are en-route to the destination space.

But I think a diagonal transition would be more helpful than a left or right slide even if it didn’t show the intermediate spaces.

Thanks for the reply. Within those limitations, I guess at least seeing the old space fly off diagonally along the ‘line’ connecting the two spaces and the new one come in in the same direction would be a big improvement, so I’ll keep my fingers crossed to see this or something similar sometime in the future.

As someone who still runs 10.6.8 using the native Spaces, I can confirm that (using a 3x4 grid for example) there are no in-between windows flying by as you switch to another non-adjacent space. Switching from Space 1 to Space 9 goes directly there as if they were next to each other. (You don’t see Space 5 in between.)

Moreover, in a 3x4 grid, switching from Space 1 to say, either 11 or 12 shows the proper angle of descent (not 45°). It’s so wildly intuitive, no wonder I’ve held out upgrading my Mac Pro home machine all this time.

My MacBook Pro running 10.9 uses TotalSpaces 2 and works great for my uses there, but I plan on upgrading to 10.9 on the Mac Pro in the next month, so introducing diagonal transitions (if feasible) to TS2 would be the most valuable feature addition for me.

Thanks for the info. I think diagonal transitions are feasible for slide, as I said before. It is on my short term list of things to do.

I hate to be accused of bumping this topic up, but having now installed Mavericks and bought an upgrade to TotalSpaces2, the lack of diagonal transitions is really the only thing I now miss using virtual desktops on OS X. I hope it’s creeping up the to-do list!

TS2 was nonetheless well worth the upgrade cost for the speed improvements alone, and I hope this change allows for the diagonal transitions to be implemented relatively easily.