Some small OSX suggestions

Questions about YourKit Java Profiler
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pepijn
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2015 12:50 pm

Some small OSX suggestions

Post by pepijn »

First of all thanks for bundling YourKit as an app; that's already really nice. I noticed some small cosmetic issues with the app though.
  • The name of the app uses underscores and has version number information in it. Would be nicer if it was just 'YourKit Java Profiler.app' with spaces.
  • The bundle name and display name in the info.plist file is 'YourKit Java Profiler 2015 build 15052'. That makes the application title in the menu bar kind of unnecessarily long. Stripping the version number information here again would be nicer. You can get this information from the about box anyway so it's kind of redundant.
  • The icns file is missing a 256x26 and 512x512 variant of the icon which makes the app icon look blurry on hidpi displays
  • The icon has some ugly aliasing artifacts around the edge of the square.
These aren't showstoppers of course, but it makes the app stick out like a sore thumb among other OSX applications.

I had one issue with using the app as well. The items in the menubar don't always seem to be enabled correctly. When I connect to an application, the View menu is entirely disabled when the main dashboard tab is open. The tabs in the dashboard itself work correctly though. When opening a snapshot tab the View menu is correctly enabled.
Anton Katilin
Posts: 6172
Joined: Wed Aug 11, 2004 8:37 am

Re: Some small OSX suggestions

Post by Anton Katilin »

Hello pepijn

Thank you for your suggestions.
The name of the app uses underscores and has version number information in it. Would be nicer if it was just 'YourKit Java Profiler.app' with spaces.
The version number is included to simplify simultaneous installation of different versions or builds. Otherwise it would be difficult to distinct multiple copies.

The underscores are used instead of spaces intentionally. The profiler application contains the profiler agent library, and it is extremely important for IDE and EE server integrations that its full path does not contain spaces. Spaces cannot be reliably quoted in a general case, so the best solution is to avoid spaces at all.
The bundle name and display name in the info.plist file is 'YourKit Java Profiler 2015 build 15052'. That makes the application title in the menu bar kind of unnecessarily long. Stripping the version number information here again would be nicer. You can get this information from the about box anyway so it's kind of redundant.
I agree the name is long. As I wrote, having the version is desirable, but we still could make it a little shorter. For example, to use the build number only, like 'YourKit Java Profiler b15052'. Would this worth implementing?

Regarding icons. It's a known problem, we've got corresponding change requests in our bug tracker.
I had one issue with using the app as well. The items in the menubar don't always seem to be enabled correctly. When I connect to an application, the View menu is entirely disabled when the main dashboard tab is open. The tabs in the dashboard itself work correctly though. When opening a snapshot tab the View menu is correctly enabled.
The View menu items are enabled only when a snapshot is opened and selected. This is for historical reasons, but now it seems they can be enabled when a running application session is shown. I'll add a change request.

Best regards,
Anton
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