Jon Udell (yes, the famous writer and analyst) shares my taste for distraction-free desktops, and shows how he achieves it in this six minutes screencast. The only part of the method he presents that's not implemented directly in OS X is done using my DesktopSweeper. Indeed, I've always thought that such a feature should be part of the OS.

The method I use to get about the same results as what Jon describes is virtual desktops. Sometimes I have so many windows open that even using Expose isn't practical. Virtual desktops allow me to group windows by application, or by task, or project, and to switch between desktops using hotkeys.

For example I'm working in Frontier with 25 windows open (you wouldn't believe how fast Frontier windows can multiply! ;)) and I receive a chat invitation. All I have to do, then, is to press the hotkey that takes me to my iChat's desktop. Oh, look, it's Seth telling me that he just sent me that email I was waiting for. Good. I press the hotkey that takes me to my mail desktop, and here it is. When I'm done, I press the hotkey that takes me back to the Frontier desktop, and that's it. You may think that it's easy to do the same by hiding applications, but this was voluntarily a simple example. In fact, I often have windows grouped by project or task, and then it might involve hiding and showing three or four different applications.

Anyway, I couldn't have advertised DesktopSweeper half as well if I tried. So thanks, Jon. :)

Next step, Slashdot. ;)