On 10 Mar 2006 at 11:08, Eric Dannewitz wrote: > What? Firefox is an "old" program? Thunderbird is an "old" program? > Word is an old program? These are not old programs by any means......
As I pointed out in another post, your test for what constitutes multiple instances may be flawed, in that you're using the buttons in the Taskbar as an indicator of how many instances of the application are running. This is not necessarily correct in any version of Windows. 1. in WinXP, as a workaround for the problem created by switching to the SDI in many Microsoft apps, Microsoft added a feature that groups all document windows that have the same application name in their title bar into a single button with a menu to navigate between the individual windows. However, windows from multiple instances of the same app get grouped in the same Taskbar button because they are instances of the same executable. The only way to tell if there are multiple instances or not is to check the Task Manager. For Firefox, I'm sure you're getting multiple instances. For Word, I'm not certain. For Thunderbird, you're probably not. 2. in Win2K or before, you have the opposite problem. Multiple windows of SDI documents proliferate Taskbar buttons, with multiple buttons in the Taskbar for a single instance of an application. This was the case with the SDI version of Word (Word2K and later) or any web browser. There could be dozens of Taskbar buttons for a single instance of Internet Explorer or MS WOrd. Now, in regard to Thunderbird, it probably was programmed (as are most email clients) to allow only one instance at a time, because it needs a lock on its mailbox files in order to be able to function. This is not an OS-level function, but something programmed into the Thunderbird executable -- when you execute it, it checks to see if there's another instance of it loaded, and if so, brings that instance forward, and aborts the loading of the second instance. This is not a problem for certain application designs, but my email client, Pegasus Mail, does this, too, and there is a scenario where I'd like it to allow multiple instances. Pegasus is set up that you log in with your emailbox name when you open the app. Then for each emailbox name, you can have an unlimited number of identities that correspond to any number of email accounts on any number of servers. But this leads to something of a problem for me. I have both my personal and business email all in the same emailbox, and it would actually be easier if I segregated them into two different base emailboxes and could run two separate instances of Pegasus. This would allow me to have both my personal and business email open and running at all times, but still keep them fully segregated. But Pegasus disallows multiple instances in its executable, so I can never do that. There are plenty of good reasons for different kinds of applications engineered in different ways to behave in different fashions. I think it's good that Windows does not force one behavior or the other, since it allows for appropriate adaptation of applications to the apps at hand, and allows for a wider variety of possible types of application designs. As long as the application developer does her job, none of these things should ever confuse the user. Unfortunately, not all programmers properly account for the potential problems. Certainly, an OS-level restriction would prohibit that problem from ever bothering a user, but it would also prevent freedom of design for those programmers who *do* know how to do it right. I prefer freedom, myself. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
