"Spatial" mode?

[Romeyn Prescott]

I keep seeing people talking about Nautilus'/Gnome's "new" Spatial Mode.

Am I missing something, or is this what the Mac OS did from 1984 
until OS X was introduced?  Frankly it's something I missed 
immediately when OS X came out.  A lot of people complain about the 
window clutter, but if you didn't want the parent window to remain 
you just held down the option key as you opened it and the parent 
vanished.

Or is spatial mode something more and I'm missing it/not finding it 
as I Google?  It might be new to Linux, but it's certainly nothing 
"new"!

Curious,
...ROMeyn
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signat-url: http://www2.potsdam.edu/prescor/signat-url.htm