Workspace defined 1

The idea of workspace has been something that has interested me for a long time. I will start this post with a short definition and then develop the way I use the term and think about workspace in subsequent posts.

I use the term workspace to refer to both a personal information space and to the collection of workspaces that are part of it. Think of a CMS configured for each person as as his or her own authoring and publishing platform.

In the way I think of workspace, it consists of all the components we assemble when we perform a complex real world task. It's made up of the tools we use, an editor, a browser, specialized text processors (e.g., spell check); the pages, documents and files we consult, reference and use; and the content type, templates, microformats and other components needed author a page.

A workspace can be made up of desktop UI components of a PC (applications, files and folders, etc.) or the authoring UI of a CMS.

There are a variety of examples of workspace in products such as Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and ActiveState Firefly which I will address in detail in subsequent posts.

Continued in Workspace defined 2.