Odd system interaction in Sametime 7.5.1

by Volker Weber

The new Sametime client is interacting with the operating system in some strange and unexpected way. Since I think that Notes 8 will suffer from similar surprises, I will try to understand them now.

The first thing you notice after you installed Sametime is that there is no dock item. So the first thing I did was to drag the program icon to the dock to add it there. Now watch the movie below very carefully. It does not matter whether you click the program icon or the dock icon, Sametime will always load a second dock item. Also note the little black arrow under the second icon. This indicates a running program in contrast to an inactive icon. The second icon represents the bigger process of the two mentioned in the last posting. Apparently the program icon only launches the Java Virtual Machine with the necessary parameters. It then remains in memory without interacting with the user interface in order to catch a second launch. Also notice that it does not make any sense to keep the second icon in the dock, because it cannot launch the application. It will simply load an empty JVM. In my case it also kicked off Textmate, because that is my catch-all for unknown files.

In conclusion, Sametime is the only program on the Mac which requires two dock icons, and the user needs to be educated which one of them does what. Since Notes 8 will use the same architecture, it most likely will behave in the same way.

While the two icons issue is a an architectural one, the other odd behaviour could potentially be fixed. The user interface conventions on the Mac say that an application should have its About and Preferences on the application menu. So does Sametime, only that those menu items don't actually do anything. You have to refer to the file menu and the help menu to envoke them, as you can see in movie below. This is a "write once and don't test everywhere" issue.

Comments

I am not a Mac guy, but i am trying hard to learn SWT and eclipse technologie. I think your problem with the dock is a swt/eclipse problem. Look at this eclipse 3.3 brings mac dock support

I think this is exactly your problem. Maybe a later version of Sametime will be built on eclipse 3.3 and then the problem should be solved.

Ralf

Ralf M Petter, 2007-04-26 16:13

Thank you Ralf, that was a very good link.

Post a comment











Shall I remember this for you?




Use your full name and a working email address. Unless you want your comment to be removed. No kidding.



Recent comments

heiko hebig on Amazing photos - all taken with a mobile phone at 01:50
Chris Reckling on Finally getting started on last.fm at 00:53
Alexander Kluge on Finally getting started on last.fm at 22:31
Volker Weber on Finally getting started on last.fm at 22:22
Jamey Shiels on Synchronizing iPhone with ... Lotus Notes at 22:10
Dominik Schwind on Finally getting started on last.fm at 21:25
Kevin Pettitt on Showstopper for Lotus Connections at 20:45
Martin Hiegl on Showstopper for Lotus Connections at 19:27
goran angelov on iPhone: Can't hear through the receiver or speakers? at 18:53
Sean Cull on I have seen faster at 18:27
Matthias Leisi on Coming up next Thursday: sticky and sweet at 18:21
Ted Stanton on Showstopper for Lotus Connections at 18:17
Handly Cameron on Showstopper for Lotus Connections at 18:15
Volker Weber on Showstopper for Lotus Connections at 18:11
Alan Lepofsky on Showstopper for Lotus Connections at 18:09
Volker Weber on Showstopper for Lotus Connections at 18:04
Ben Rose on Showstopper for Lotus Connections at 18:04
Ted Stanton on Showstopper for Lotus Connections at 17:52
Ben Poole on Showstopper for Lotus Connections at 17:48
Matt Katz on Showstopper for Lotus Connections at 17:13
Stephan Bohr on Showstopper for Lotus Connections at 16:44
Volker Weber on Showstopper for Lotus Connections at 16:40
Mitch Cohen on Showstopper for Lotus Connections at 16:34
Kevin Pettitt on Showstopper for Lotus Connections at 16:30
Joerg Hochwald on Lotus seems to be very proud of itself today at 16:22

Ceci n'est pas un blog

vowe.net is a personal website published by Volker Weber a.k.a. vowe. I am an author, consultant and systems architect based in Darmstadt, Germany.

rss Click here to subscribe

Hello

About me
Contact
Publications
Certificates
Frequently asked questions

Twitter Updates

More >

Poll

Can you bring a camera phone to work?

Getting poll results. Please wait...

Local time is 04:39

visitors.gif
114 visitors online

News

Other sources of news, imported into my own format to make them more accessible:

Heise Online
Schlagzeilen
Weather

Archives

As most of my articles roll off the front page rather quickly, I am making an archive of previous posts available here. You can also use the handy search box at the top of the page if you are looking for something particular.

Last 30 days
More archives

Got the T-shirt?

Got the T-shirt?
Are you buying from the US?

Systems Architecture

This site runs on an Apache web server on top of the Linux operating system. The content is managed with MovableType which is implemented in Perl. Last but not least the HTML code your browser sees is put together with PHP.

© 1992-2008 Volker Weber.
All Rights Reserved.

Impressum