10.5.3 breaks Spaces

dobes918 wrote:
But the thing is, it does NOT behave that way for all of us who have updated to 10.5.3.

It behaves that way with my wife's account after enabling Spaces for the first time ever since doing a clean install of Leopard and subsequent 10.5.x updates (non-combo) up to 10.5.3.

If might be a helpful data if someone not having this problem would create a temporary account (maybe enabling the ephemeral Leopard Guest account would be work?) and check if it happens with that. If not, then it points more to being a system-wide than per-user issue.

dobes918 wrote:
But the thing is, it does NOT behave that way for all of us who have updated to 10.5.3. Why not? What is the difference?

Oh, and earlier you said:

+First of all, I DO have Finder set up in Spaces in my list of applications, to be visible in all Spaces.+

Have you tried removing Finder from the assigned applications list in Spaces preferences? I'm not sure anyone reporting this problem has it configured that way, at least not me.

sjk wrote:

ncbp wrote:
That doesn't happen for any other application.

It happens for me with any application that's assigned to all spaces, not just Finder.

I've just tested, and I think you are (mostly) right - any application will take focus and become the frontmost application as soon as you switch to another space, if it is assigned to all spaces, and if it was the last active among the applications assigned to all spaces...
I still think there is a subtle difference because Finder will steal focus even without any windows open, but I guess you could argue that this is because the Desktop is also Finder. In any case, I think we agree that the behaviour has changed - and I at least find that it has changed to the worse 🙂
/ncbp

The behavior is simple. When you switch spaces the application that is given focus is the application that had focus in the previous space, if that application is found on the space you're switching to. If not, it is the application that had focus the last time you were in that space. That defaults then to the finder if no other applications are open. This is easy to test by having a browser window open in two adjacent spaces, with another application in one of them. For example, this is what I did:

Firefox window in space 1, Firefox and iTunes in space 2. Start in space 2 focused on iTunes. Switch to space 1. Firefox grabs focus. Switch back. Firefox still has focus (default was the application that had focus in the previous space). Now, close that firefox window and open something else (I used an XCode window). Xcode has focus. Switch to space 1 - firefox has it. Switch to space 2 - Xcode has focus. There was no firefox, so it defaulted to the last application. So, put iTunes in front on space 2, switch to space 1, switch back, and iTunes still has focus. The behavior is what you would expect.

So, we've established what it is that's happening - when you switch spaces, if the current application has no window in that space, you go to the last application that had focus. If that application happens to be the finder, the next time you switch spaces finder will still have focus, because it is in every space. Now the question is, is that desirable? And I would say no. I think the default behavior should be to switch first to the last application that had focus in that space, not first to the application that had focus in your last space. But, if you still want the "keep the same application" behavior, I think you should also have an option to not treat the finder as an application in that way, because, as has been stated, that's really annoying.

mjg82 wrote:
The behavior is simple.

Maybe, but your explanation of it… oh my! 🙂

We also have to consider what does/should happen when switching spaces (with every possible method) if any applications are assigned to specific/all windows. And maybe any influence the new "When switching to an application, switch to a space with open windows for the application" preference in certain combinations. And where new windows should appear, whether or not it's a user-initiated action.

For whatever reason, the Spaces implementation still seems overlook some of the possible scenarios that can cause generally undesirable results. For anyone affected, I think the new preference is a step forward while the new sticky-focus-when-switching behavior (for lack of a better term) is a step backward. Even just fixing the latter without introducing any regressions would make Spaces much more comfortably usable for me.

I am having the same issue. I have no applications assigned to any Space and it happens just as described by everyone else. If they do fix it soon, completely disabling the sticky application functionality might be bad. At least, it would be for me because I sometimes have things like Camino or Messenger in multiple windows and like to be able to keep active applications between Spaces. Maybe just disabling the desktop as a participant in spaces or a candidate for selectability, whatever you want to call it, would be best since the feature described above applies to multiple finder windows in different Spaces and is still useful in that situation. Also, I don't think it would take much for Apple to fix this issue if they were to simply eliminate the desktop from Spaces interaction.

This doesn't seem to be strictly true, unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean. When I switch from Space 1 (in which Adium is in focus) to Space 2 (with Firefox in focus) and back again, Adium does not resume focus again. In 10.5.2 and earlier, the last-focused application in that space would again receive focus when I returned to that Space.
In the case I described above, at no point do I pass over a space in which Finder or the desktop are dominant. Firefox and Adium are both locked to their respective spaces. The problem, for me, is that the last application I clicked on remains in focus no matter what space I go to or what application was in focus the last time I was there.
This in not the way things worked in 10.5.2, and this is not an improvement.

Corvana wrote:
The problem, for me, is that the last application I clicked on remains in focus no matter what space I go to or what application was in focus the last time I was there.

Sounds like it's behaving as though every app is assigned to all spaces.

This in not the way things worked in 10.5.2, and this is not an improvement.

Definitely not.

I never casually recommend deleting preferences files, but apparently some people have fixed their Spaces problems by trashing ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist so that might be worth trying.

sjk wrote:
I never casually recommend deleting preferences files, but apparently some people have fixed their Spaces problems by trashing ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist so that might be worth trying.

I usually don't do arbitrary deletions either, but this new behaviour is so annoying that I tried allready - no luck though 😟

Alright. I figured that since people were having trouble understanding the erratic behavior, or didn't think they had it, I made a quick movie of my Spaces acting up with an unregistered copy of Snapz X Pro. By unregistered I mean please forgive the huge watermarks. As you can see, when I switch to iTunes and then to Camino and then to Finder and back to Camino, Finder stays active. But after, when I'm switching between iTunes, Messenger and Camino, everything is normal. Maybe this will help nail down the issue so we can all understand it. I hosted it at http://homepage.mac.com/bob2durr/finderhijacksspaces.mov . Sorry, but some of the video is a bit glitchy and you may want to let it load before watching it otherwise it just sits there on one frame until the end. I think it's a result of compressing it down from 51 MB to 12. Whatever, you get the point.

Come on Apple, you made Leopard, I'm sure you can fix Spaces.

An interesting observation is that I only have this problem if I switch spaces by using ctrl+Arrow keys or if I switch directly to a space by using opt+number. If I activate spaces (default F8), and use the mouse or number keys to choose a space, the finder does not grab focus. Just like in 10.5.2.

I'm still not 100% convinced that anyone does not have this behavior. Please convince me and show us exactly what you have in each space and what you do when you don't get this behavior. For me, I don't have any applications pre-assigned in the spaces preferences.

ncbp wrote:
I usually don't do arbitrary deletions either, but this new behaviour is so annoying that I tried allready - no luck though 😟

Bummer. Maybe try creating a new account and see if you can recreate the problem with it? Of course that won't resolve the problem with your account but it'll help you know if it's a system or user level issue.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that you actively click with F8 and with the other's you don't. Or maybe finder grabs focus between windows. I made another screencast of the issue, this time with Jing so I don't have watermarks. It will be uploaded soon after this post. The format is .swf (flashplayer), so I appologize for the glitchiness of the fast transitions, and I used Alt+Tab, F8, ctrl+number, and ctrl+Arrow switching to show where the problem is and isn't. I hope this helps clarify the issue. 🙂

SWF Screencast at http://homepage.mac.com/bob2durr/FinderHijacksSpaces.swf
I would recommend downloading the file because menu bar is lost without a browser window taller than 900 pixels, my screen height. Sorry

So is this going to get fixed or what. Can I uninstall an update like I can on windows?