Not as easy as you may have thought
by Volker Weber
Cross-platform development isn't easy. At least not for IBM. They may have the Eclipse platform, but that is not sufficient to deliver on all targeted operating systems. Case in point is the brand new Sametime 7.5 client. It relies on Microsoft Internet Explorer (!) to render chats. On Linux it needs Mozilla, as does the "native" Notes client. Which btw also builds on Eclipse, but does not contain the Sametime plugins, which are also built on top of Eclipse. If you have tested the Sametime 7.5 client on the Mac, you will have seen how badly that rendered the buddylist and the chats. That may be due to the fact that IBM has to use Apple's Web Kit, which is the technology behind Safari and inherited from Linux' Konqueror.
What do we have now? An Eclipse environment, which runs best on Windows. Ask those who have seen and run the current version of Hannover, or look at the state of Sametime 7.5. Nothing on the Mac yet. Let's take a look at the current visitor demographics at vowe's magic flying circus:
Luckily, IBM has committed itself to support a native Notes client in 7.0.2, both on PowerPC and Intel. Not like the "native" Linux client, but a real one. However, it has not been beta-tested yet. Because it had bugs which did not permit it to be released to beta testers. I just hope for IBM that they can get enough bugs ironed out to release the client in 7.0.2 and not postpone it as they just did with the Sametime client.
Comments
It so not as bad as it looks. Seems like IBM uses the browser widget in SWT. So on a different platform a different browser is used. Switching to the Gecko engine for Windows is an ongoing discussion within the SWT developers (see https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=79213 ).
And yes SWT has way to go on the Mac.
:-) stw
Can't help thinking things would be better if they'd just use Swing intelligently...
No, Simon. A Swing application would be unacceptable.
FWIW:
edbrill.com visitors: Mac is 3.71%, Linux is 2.93%
I have the 7.0.2 Mac Notes client current build and will be installing it shortly (hopefully this week)...it's not that far off.
When will the Mac Notes client be released to be tested by people outside of IBM? There are people who get take it for a real spin, not as a side machine.
Within the next few weeks.
Within the next few weeks? I thought 7.0.2 will be released in the next few weeks. Will there be any real world testing at all for the Mac client?
Go on Volker, explain why a Swing app would not be acceptable but a broken SWT app would...
Of course there will be real-world testin for the Mac client and it won't be released until it is ready.
Simon, a broken SWT app can be fixed. And I am not going to go into a losing battle with you about Swing. You are being paid to be stronger than I am. :-)
Ed, I am worried about the second part of your sentence.
@Ed,
Do you think ST 7.5 was ready?
@ Bruce for all the conjecture of the last week saying it wasn't, most of the comments I've seen are people who have installed it and are running it. Like 20,000 IBMers. Realizing that a few people have posted here and elsewhere that it wasn't ready, have you seen anything that substantiates this?
@Ed: Slightly different question but more closely related to Volker's post -- what's the break down by platform among those 20,000 IBMers? My guess would be that it skews heavily towards Windows even more than Volker's traffic.
@Volker: even though IBM may be "committed [...] to support a native Notes client in 7.0.2, both on PowerPC and Intel" it's not clear what happens for Hannover. Jeff Eisen has indicated that there will be a standalone client. Windows only or Mac as well?
Regarding SWT vs. Swing: I'm a big fan of Eclipse but Swing has improved substantially since the early days. Large cross-platform apps can be written in Swing with good performance. Ugly, slow, memory-hungry apps can be written in either Swing or SWT ;-)
Also, this may not be widely know but it's possible to use Swing in Eclipse plugins. There are some caveats but it works fine.
Seems, vowes circus-statistics are a bit off of the market share. Apple had about 15% share in its best times, but that is years back. Current share seems to be at about 5%, so Eds stats seem to be near the market. Sorry, I don't have publicly available statistics, where I could send you to back my numbers. Interestingly enough, the Apple Population is louder than their market share would suggest, but that is a normal phenomenon .....
@Ed,
I have installed the 7.5 gold client and am running it on my work PC. Granted it works but, I expect better from the worlds largest software company. I really do. I have also been spoiled by public IM clients such as AOL IM, Trillian and Skype which are highly refined and snappy.
There are however some things that do need some refining in the current 7.5 gold client:
1) The client is slow to load and slow to interact with. For example when I launch the connect client it takes about 15-20 seconds to load. When I click on a buddy to chat with it takes several seconds to launch the chat window and then seems a bit sluggish - not natural - it's hard to describe.
2) When trying to add a group to my buddy list from a NAB and I don't know the exact name of the group I am unable to find the group.
3) The connect client is not remembering my passwords for the 3 communities I am members of.
4) Going from Beta 4 to gold happenned fairly quickly and the perception by some people including Chris Miller who I respect tremendously even commented on this.
5) I have not yet tested the meeting room.
While I think that none of these issues would stop IBM from releasing the 7.5 I was just hoping that it would shine. Maybe when a FP1 comes along many of the minor issues I am having will be resolved.
Now getting back on Vowe's point I sure hope that the move to Eclipse with it's multi-platform support doesn't hinder the performance of some of the more demanding Notes applications out there.
Also - remember I am on your side buddy.
@Bruce,
I've seen the issues in 1, 2 & 3 and due to 4 I never got chance to report them as bugs.
An easy way of submitting bugs would make a lot of sense. The Pando client has a good example of this.
@Bruce
#1 - Ditto. I have a hyperthreading 3.2GHz, 1GB RAM PC. Loading is slow here even with those specs. I just clocked it at 30 seconds to load and log me into 2 communities. I see the same issue with opening new chats, etc...
#2 - Ditto. People who don't know a group name would have a tough time doig this without help on the group name.
#3 - Mine works OK for the two communities I have.
#4 - Ditto. I saw some cleanup, but was kind of expecting a B5.
#5 - I tested a meeting on the demo server back when it was at Beta2 code. Seemed to work well and screen sharing was MUCH improved over pre-7.5 servers...
Let me add that on most days I have to kill the sametime client multiple times because mu CPU usage will run amok. I understand that this was a non-reproducible, deferred bug report. This will NOT be good for corporate client roll-outs. Although that would be a way to figure out why it happens.
Also, I don't like the idea of using IE to render the chat window. I sure hope it's locked down really well before the community gateway is available...
Speaking of multiple communities, I loaded the gold client on a laptop that had never used the 7.5 client. But it came up with the stdemo75 community as well. Odd...
@Ed - substantiation? See above. I sure hope that it's a small number of users who would have to end their clients multiple times per day. I can't imagine what the performance is going to be once extra plugins are deployed. And like Bruce said - I'm on your side here!
@ Chris W - I will address one of your comments. When you loaded the gold client onto a new laptop and connected to your primary community you found something that I had reported and was deferred.
The primary community stores buddylists for all your communities. So you will get them back.
@Chris M, but if my primary (default) community is a ST 6.5.1 server, I can understand that it keeps my buddy list which would contain items from the other community. But would that force it to create a secondary community as well? It's no biggie, it was just a little curious...
