Western Era
Workspace refers to small premises provided, often by local authorities or economic development agencies, to help new businesses to establish themselves. These typically provide not only physical space and utilities but also administrative services and links to support and finance organizations, as well as peer support among the tenants. A continuum of sophistication ranges through categories such as 'managed workspaces', 'business incubators' and 'business and employment co-operatives'. In cities, they are often set up in buildings that are disused but which the local authority wishes to retain as a landmark. At the larger end of the spectrum are business parks, virtual offices, technology parks and science parks.
Workspaces are visualized in different ways. For example, on Linux computers using Compiz or Beryl with the Cube and Rotate Cube plugins enabled, each workspace is rendered as a face of an on-screen cube, and switching between workspaces is visualized by zooming out from the current face, rotating the cube to the new face, and zooming back in. On macOS, the old set of windows slides off the screen and the new set slides on. Window managers without "eye candy" often simply remove the old windows and display the new ones without any sort of intermediate effect.