So I was thinking last night, I seem to recall seeing on a video at some point there was a preferences/settings screen which someone flipped through and there was a discreet setting for changing the number of desktops from 1-4. It's possible I dreamed this or made it up, but that's fairly irrelevant since it's just to serve as background information

I'm figuring that somewhere in the fremantle code, there must be a setting that tells the system how many desktops to display. Surely we could just change this and add as many desktops as we want? Say, another 4... or 8.. or 16...

Seriously though. That could be really useful. I can see myself running out of screen real estate pretty quickly. Another 4 desktops would be A++.

This might sound like a good idea -- and I thought about it after I started playing with the N900 myself -- but even with four desktops, one can begin to get confused.

There really shouldn't need to be a way to add more desktops, as applications are their own desktops in a sense. So, you can open up several apps and switch back and forth between all of them via the multitask button. Then you can go to the desktop and flip between 1-4 of them...

Once you start adding more, you are really impeding the speed of operations by having to find, then select what you want.

Imho, of course.

Tim

Rather than desktop..how about different OS for each desktop. You got iPHONE desktop and then Adroid and Palm pre. All in different desktop?

Ahh yes. Good point. I hadn't thought of that.

Hmm, I don't know, I find 4 virtual desktops on GNOME both enough and almost confusing already. And those are 2x2 grid instead of 1x4 grid. In the 1x4 grid of Maemo/Panorama the desktop of preference is always max 2 swipes away. However if you'd want say 6 virtual desktops a cube model might be an option. In such case, it is also max 2 swipes away, and the 3D model helps to envision people what is where. Except such costs quite some time to implement, and one can swipe the wrong way which is not possible with 1x4 grid.

True, but we should be able to have more than 4 if WE want them, not what someone deems we need. What is it on the iPhone, you can have like 11-12?

i'd rather like it to limit it to 3 screens that wrap around, instead of adding more

I was under the impression that the 4 desktops wrap around so you can keep scrolling sideways forever. Did I imagine this or is this true (if you can't, then that's number one on the fix list for me as far as I'm concerned) ?

I think it would be neat to be able to scroll up and down aswell as left and right, although that'd be a logistical nightmare. And honestly, I can't think of any good reason other than it being pretty cool.

Anyhow, regardless of whether or not we should or shouldn't, or how crazy and idea it is.. we should theoretically be able to add more desktops. I can't imagine this is coded in any more than in a config file somewhere?

Anyone have any insights?

Not necessarily. It wouldn't need to represent any real object. I would personally like a system where you always swipe in a certain direction to get to a specific desktop, no matter which one you're on. Just always swipe left for desktop A and always swipe down for desktop D etc. 4 desktops would never need two swipes.

The panoramic desktop looks much more cool, though