In case you missed the auto-update earlier this week, we posted a new version (version 1.1.1) of You Control: Desktops that addressed a couple of minor bugs and one major improvement to the transition effects when running Desktops on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.

Thanks to a guest post in our forums we were able to add back the really slick and smooth transition effects that Desktops users saw in Mac OS X 10.3. And, we addressed a bug that some users had voiced their opinion about. The bug was that if they had set their virtual desktops to have different background pictures, the new background picture would not show up until after the transition had taken effect. For example, if the transition was set to the popular Cube transition, when the desktop was rotating, you would not see the background for the upcoming desktop until after that desktop was in place.

To address that bug, we’ve added a short delay between the time you request the transition and when the transition begins. This allows us to draw the new, upcoming desktop background properly. Now, because users of You Control: Desktops have various machines that range from an iBook to a dual processor G5, we had to take a middle road for the transition and erred on the side of a slower processor. So if you’ve got a fast Mac and want to reduce the delay between transitions what do you do? You edit the preferences via the Terminal that’s what! Here’s what you do…

There is a new hidden preference for those that want to fine tune transition speed.  It is an integer representing the millionths of a second to wait between freezing the screen and beginning the transition. By default it is 10000 (1/100 second) or 900000 (9/10 second) if the desktop picture is changing. The name of the preference is “TransitionSleep” and to set it you can use the following command in the Terminal:

defaults write com.yousoftware.desktops TransitionSleep -integer 100000

either set to zero or use the following to revert to default:

defaults delete com.yousoftware.desktops TransitionSleep

I suspect most users won’t care or ever need to touch this, but if you are a power user, I suspect you might like to find a tidbit like this. On my 1.25 GHz PowerBook G4 with 1 GB of RAM, I’ve set my TransitionSleep time to 700000 and I am able to see the upcoming desktop just fine. At any setting less than 700000 the new desktop background doesn’t get “set” until after the transition takes place.

The cube effect isn’t the only one where this can be seen. you can also see it in the Twist and Swirl transitions. Those are two of my personal favorites.