OS X Lion Mission Control - Why can't I organize my spaces the way I want to?

Question

I just updated to Lion today and found at about the new Mission Control. I like it a lot (maybe because I'm pretty new to OS X and didn't now about spaces before, because I actually read a lot of complaints about the grid view that's gone), and I wonder why I can't simply reorganize my spaces the way I want:

I can sort of do this by choosing in which order I open my spaces, but then they get automatically reorganized as I use them, or, if I uncheck the "Automatically rearrange spaces based on most recent use" checkbox in the Settings, all my fullscreen Spaces end up at the end after all my desktop.

For example, I can't figure out how to have something like:

Fullscreen Terminal - Desktop 1 - Desktop 2 - Desktop 3 - Fullscreen Terminal

Is there a way to achieve that?

Also, why not allow all applications to be in fullscreen mode?

Solution 1

In the Mission Control overview you can drag+drop the small spaces at the top to re-arrange them.

Unfortunately, you can't put a full-screen app to the left of "Desktop 1", so you cannot achieve your desired layout. However, you can organise them to something like:

Desktop 1 - Fullscreen Terminal - Desktop 2 - Desktop 3 - Fullscreen Terminal

And they'll (mostly) stay that way with the 'rearrange based on recent use' checkbox disabled. I say mostly, because I've noticed some oddities (read: bugs) where they still get re-arranged, even on the latest OS X Lion update versions.

Solution 2

In order to add Fullscreen support to all apps, you can use chpwn's Maximizer:

He states that there are some compatibility issues with some apps, but it works fine for me several apps. It is definitely worth a try.

As for the spaces, I am very disappointed with the way they're included in Mission Control. They can no longer be rearranged and assigning windows to spaces is (imho) more difficult - by assigning it through the dock menu.

Spaces keep re-organizing themselves (e.g., Spaces 1 - 3 - 2), unless you're disabling the "shuffle spaces automatically"-option in the Mission Control settings pane.

Solution 3

Nothing like that's been discovered yet.

Apps have to be updated by their developers to support fullscreen.

Solution 4

You can reorder spaces by dragging them starting with OS X 10.7.2.

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Comments

[user3333603]

Only applications which have been written to support fullscreen (the developer's job) support fullscreen mode.

[nbarraille]

Did you even read my post?

[nbarraille]

Yes, that's what I figured, but I really don't understand why it requires something special from an app to allow it to run full screen, it looks to me like the full screen thing is just some window managing mode, and it doesn't have anything to do with the app...

[dza]

Not from one display to another - sadly. You will have to "live" with ordering/numbering mixing everytime you connect a display. And Desktop 1 always follows the (Top) "Menu" placement apparently.