Remember my complaints about Spaces on Leopard? Well good news, with 10.5.2 there is a way to fix that behavior, thanks to the folks at Mac OS X Hints: Disable Space switching on Command-Tab in 10.5.2.

They focus on the fact that this option changes the behavior of Command-Tab, but really that is only one element. No longer does clicking on a URL in Mail force me to switch to a different virtual desktop. No longer does clicking on an already running app in the dock force me to switch to a different desktop. I can’t tell you how happy I am to have this option now. The only let down is that they didn’t include in the Spaces preferences UI.

On the off chance that the instructions this disappear, here is the core details from the OS X Hints site:

The 10.5.2 version of the Dock has a new hidden preferences flag for Spaces. You can now set OSX to not automatically switch between spaces when you press Command-Tab. This is great for me, because I like to divide things by task, rather than by app. For a given task, I’ll probably have a TextEdit window, a Terminal window, and maybe a web browser. By default, when I clicked on a given app, I’d be transported to that app’s space, and have to go through a bunch of hoops to get the new window in the space I wanted. Now, I can just Command-Tab to the app I want, and create a new window in the current space! Here’s the command in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Dock workspaces-auto-swoosh -bool NO

After running the command, you’ll need to restart the Dock (killall Dock). To undo, change NO to YES, or use defaults delete com.apple.Dock workspaces-auto-swoosh. Note you’ll have to kill the Dock again for the changes to take effect.

The only thing really holding me back from upgrading my MacBook Pro to Leopard now is setting aside enough time to get it done.