Organize workspace with Mission Control

Mission Control, another new Lion feature, allows user to set up separate environment for different kinds of tasks. For example, you can use different work environments to organize your tasks such as: the environment for personal life (Mail, Address Book, and iCal) or the environment for iLife work (iMove, iPhoto, and iTunes). So instead of having to close and reopen applications, you can just move between those environments.

 

Launch Mission Control

Do one of the following:

  • Press F3 key

  • Go to the Dock > click on Mission Control icon

 

 

Understanding the Mission Control interface

By default, you will see two windows which are presented for two workspaces

  • On the right side, Finder is the work environment (desktop)

  • On the left side, Dashboard is a place to keep small utility applications such as clocks, calculators and weather

 

 

Add and Quit work environment

Add additional work environments

  • Move the mouse to the top right side of the Mission Control screen

  • Press on the plus button

Quit work environments

When you quit any work environment, any running application assigned to that work environment will move to the next environment. However, you cannot quit the work environment containing any application in the full screen mode such as Safari. Therefore, you need to reduce the window back to standard view mode before you can quit that environment

  • Move the mouse over to a work environment

  • Click the X button on the top left of the environment

 

 

Assign applications between work environments

  • On the Mission Control page, click on any work environment (desktop)

  • Go to the Dock > click and hold on any application icon > point to Options > select the desired option under Assign To command to assign this application to a particular work environment