Aren’t we about due for another Spark release that ffixes it so copy/past works with the spellchecker enabled ?
Windows7 is in the here and now…there is no reason we should have 100% of everything working with it in 32/64 bit.
Windows8 is close to public release so I would hope Spark has been tested with the 32/64 bit betas in preparation.
At one time I had 80% of our office using Spark instead of pidgin, pandion, or something else. Ever since the copy/paste issue and other stuff like the smallish button that overrides the preferences for 'always on top" have fustrated my users i’ve been losing 1 or 2 a week to the point maybe only 20% are using Spark anymore.
Copy/paste & spellchecker are both MAJOR MAJOR features that have to work together simultaneously.
Why do my file transfers fail most of the time ? Is it Windows 7 ?
Taking away the cursor focus every time I get an IM or reply is almost enough to make me throw in the towel on Spark. This frustrated me more than anything and is a source of multiple times daily cussing at Spark.
Anybody that thinks Spark is fine as it is and the “minor” inconveniences can be lived with by the majority is in DENIAL or just plain lazy.
There are no active developers here, so it is unknown when next version of Spark will be released (if ever). Not every volunteer developer has tools to test Spark on every possible OS. I haven’t heard about Spark being tested on Win8, most probably it hasn’t. It is still Windows, so it should work in general as some old software like Exodus client.
I’m using Spark daily at work, i don’t use bring to front, but there is a bug when Spark steals focus when new message arrives. This doesn’t bug me a lot, actually i don’t really notice it much. Maybe depends on PC usage pattern, though i do office stuff, documents, emails, etc. Win7 x86 btw. This problem is known and this is a Java 6 bug. But as long as there are no active developers to push new release with Java 7 included, there won’t be a fix for that. File transfers is another whole dimension of issues and i don’t have hopes for this to be fixed at all. Too many scenarios of connections for file transfers, when it works and when it not, not speaking about different versions of Spark use for file transfers.
It looks like I am going to have to start searching for a new IM client to use with OpenFire that is being actively updated and supported. Quite honestly I was happy with most of the older pre-2.6.3 releases of Spark.
I don’t recall the old versions having file transfer issues, stealing cursor focus issues, or having the spellchecker turned on disabling copy/paste… maybe I’m just not remembering issues… but I don’t remember being so frustrated with it.
At this point I might cave in and start using PidGin unless I can find an alternative.
Depends what you call pre-2.6.3. 2.5.8 version didn’t had focus issue and maybe there were less file transfer issues, but it was using lots of proprietary code, so it was removed and had to be rewritten to make Spark truly open source and GPL compliant (now Apache license). Skin framework had to be changed as well, maybe this introduced the focus bug, which is actually a Java bug.
If you are good with a minimalistic client, recently i have found Instantbird, which looks quite nice. Another recent discovery is Gajim. Which is also gtk+ based like Pidgin. Though it looks a bit bloated and pale, but kind of nice client. Pidgin would be my last choice, somehow i really hate that client
the nightly builds fix quite a bit of the issues we are seeing with 2.6.3. File transfer was a mojor area of concern for development since we were unable to reproduce that for quite some time. The current nightly fixes the issue, but intentionally breaks a non-standard transfer mode of Spark 2.5.8 to be compatible with Miranda and such.
Windows 7 / Java 7 works on 32 and 64 bit Win7. No testing has been performed with Win 8. I have not even seen Win 8 in real life (this is an open source project, we don’t have MSDN licenses).
I am testing 2.7.0 in larger oranization right now. But I can not promise a release date. We were waiting for Java 7 on Mac for quite some time and frankly speaking moved our focus to Openfire and Kraken instead of Spark.
Any good Java developer with 3-5 days spare time can get 2.7.0 to the release. We just don’t have people doing it.