What’s a virtual desktop you may ask. Right now, all the windows that you have open are sitting on one desktop so to speak, just imagine having another computer monitor to your left with say just your mail client open and another screen to your right with say your finder open and an ftp client window open. If you’ve ever seen this in action you’ll know that adding monitors creates one big desktop so to speak or splits your desktop up into 3 sections. It’s nice to just be able to jump to say an FTP client that is neatly aligned next to say ones finder window without having to cmd-tab through a list of all your windows.
Enter virtual desktops and this OS X implementation called Desktop Manager. It allows you to set up multiple desktops and only have certain apps showing on these desktops. It’s Alpha software but it seem to work ok and it’s also free! Once installed you’ll see a little graphic in the bottom left of your screen. Each square represents a different virtual desktop. Clicking on the second square will take you to the second (empty) desktop. To move windows from the first into the second desktops simple do a opt-cmd-o and it’ll ask you what desktop you want to send the window to. See a writeup on the software at orillynet.
In closing here’s a short tip. When I do a cmd-tab to bring up the app switcher, I usually select the app I want with the mouse instead of tabbing to it.