The problem:
Spark 2.5.6 successfully logged in but all windows were blank after login (contact popups displayed though(?))
Identified this as a problem with Java (1.6) with Compiz-Fusion +AIGLX (My platform is Ubuntu Feisty 7.0.4).
Problem sorted after much googl’ing thus thanks to:
http://www.ossgeeks.co.uk/?p=135
which suggests:
"Those who use Java™, to run
applications such as Eclipse and Netbeans will usually find it will
load with no interface present when combined with Beryl or Compiz. You
can fix this by doing the following, I found it works for Java 5 and
Java 6.
The Fix
Open the environment file in the etc directory. To do this just open a terminal and type the following:-
gksudo gedit /etc/environment
Now the file is open add the line below the path line then save and exit:-
AWT_TOOLKIT=“MToolkit”
Thats it, happy coding 
More information regarding this issue can be found at the Beryl site."
doesn’t seem to work with me
also my enviroment file is empty, so I trued adding it to my /etc/profile and even /home/user/.bash_profile
but nothing…
running:
Kernel 2.6.22.5-76.fc7
compiz-fusion
beryl beryl-0.2.1-1.fc7
java version “1.6.0_02”
Java™ SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_02-b05)
Java HotSpot™ 64-Bit Server VM (build 1.6.0_02-b05, mixed mode)
everytime I run spark it runs and i can receive messages but not see anything, menus, contacts, etc… now when i logoff and log in using just gnome (non xgl) it works fine…
any1 else get this to work?
cheers
Kasp
Thanks for the tip. In a multiuser system /etc/environment is good. O a single user system, which most installations of Compiz/Beryl are located, or on a system that you don’t have root access to, adding the line to ~/.bashrc
For Gnome ( Redhat and Ubutnu )
gedit ~./bashrc
Add the following
export AWT_TOOLKIT=“MToolkit”
You can log out then log back in or run the following line from a terminal:
source ~/.bashrc && /path/to/Spark