"Lew" <noone@lewscanon.com> wrote in message
news:gvakk4$csn$1@news.albasani.net...
Qu0ll wrote:
I have asked a similar question a few times over the years and, yes,
the upshot was always that other people didn't experience it or that
it wasn't seen as very worrying when they did.
It's nice to know that someone else is also concerned by this issue
but clearly it is not very prevalent.
Is there even really an issue?
Delays, perceived or real, in un-minimizing a Windows program are
highly dependent on extrinsic factors - what other programs are
running? What are they doing? What is the amount of swap space? How
full or fragmented is the disk? What exactly is the app doing when
it's unminimized? If it's a GUI app such as a Swing app, is it
properly written to move long-running tasks off the EDT? How much
memory is on the machine? How much network traffic? Did there just
happen to be a GC run in the JVM at that moment? Are they talking
about a particular Swing app each time? What was the state of mind of
the person claiming a delay? Have they actually measured the time and
compared it to non-Swing or non-Java apps under controlled conditions?
When people say something like, "Swing apps take a long time to get
responsive when they're unmiminized", they never lock down these factors.
Studies have shown that people will often report a program as being
faster at, say, initial startup even if it's actually slower compared
to a control. Factors such as a splash screen can reduce the perceived
time even when the clock time is longer.
The question as phrased by the OP was far too vague and loaded to even
begin a meaningful discussion. There needs to be objective evidence.
Lew, the intention of my post was not to state scientific results; I was
merely trying to gauge the general opinion of Swing users on various
platforms. While I have definitely not tried to accurately measure the
various times it takes all manner of applications to become responsive
after minimising, I cam certainly not imagining it when I say that Swing
applications take much longer than native applications, at least on the
Windows machines that I have used over the past few years. I don't need
to do a full-blown scientific study to know that. There doesn't need to
be "objective evidence" when all I am asking for is a "feeling" and,
let's face it, feelings are important to many people when a they decide
what software to purchase or even to use (whether they should be or not
is of course another matter).
You seem to be using the age-old dismissive argument of "it works fine
for me and therefore there is no problem". I can categorically state
that I have seen the behaviour I have described on a number of Windows
machines using the latest Java versions on Windows XP and Vista at
least, machines with up to 4GB of RAM and plenty free at the time. The
fact that it doesn't happen on your machine says absolutely nothing
about my machine or anyone else's for that matter. I am happy for you
Lew but, really, your "it works fine for me" claims are no more
scientific than mine.
"gauge people's experiences" on the matter. If you didn't want people's
Furthermore, evidence is by its very nature scientific. The fact that others
Calling evidence "dismissive argument" is rhetorical and non-scientific. I
provided evidence that what you described is not universally experienced.