Re: Restoring Swing applications after minimising
Jarrick Chagma wrote:
I would like to gauge people's experiences with Swing applications on
various platforms. I mainly use Windows platforms for development and
running Java applications and I find that Swing applications really
don't like being minimised for any length of time. If I leave a Swing
application alone (particularly a large app like NetBeans) for about 10
minutes or more in a minimised state and then try to restore it, it will
usually take a long time to become responsive again during which time
there is a lot of disk activity. On a slow machine this can take a
minute or longer.
Wasn't nearly this exact question posted a while back? I seem to recall that
this was not everyone's experience.
I also have seen behavior under Windows such as you describe on programs that
don't use Swing, or even Java.
I realise this is related to Windows itself swapping out some memory
that the app is using but why does it only happen with Swing apps? I
have tried setting the JVM parameter sun.awt.keepWorkingSetOnMinimize to
true but this only helps in a minor way. This problem does not seem to
affect SWT apps like Eclipse which always responds almost immediately
after being minimised so what makes Swing apps so vulnerable to this
problem?
I have used Eclipse-based IDEs for years; I don't notice them taking more or
less time than, say, NetBeans to become responsive under Windows.
I would also like to know if it is a Windows-only problem or does it
happen on Linux or the Mac as well?
I doubt that it's even a Windows problem, that is to say, that Swing apps
behave differently under Windows in this regard than other Java or non-Java apps.;
Also, is there some way to resolve this issue on Windows other than
setting sun.awt.keepWorkingSetOnMinimize?
Looking through previous threads on this subject it seems that I am
risking being accused of trolling for evoking comparisons between Swing
and SWT and also that most people just don't seem to see this issue as a
significant problem. Why not?
Probably because we are not seeing the phenomenon at all.
I find it exceedingly annoying to have
to wait for a Swing app to respond after being restored when all other
Windows applications pretty much start being responsive immediately.
This behaviour contributes to Swing apps being seen as slow by many
people and also negatively affects the standing of Java apps in the
community in general.
Does it? Does it really?
--
Lew