MacOS 10.6 and Marvin 5.2.6

I have now had two students show me problems with MarvinSketch 5.2.6 on their Macs.  Both were running MacOS 10.6.x and Java 6 Update 20.  The problems were various: long time to load, long time to respond, hanging Safari, etc.  They were the kinds of problems I used to see in computers with insufficient RAM, but these were both new computers, and they had boatloads of RAM.  The problems persisted even after emptying the Java and browser caches.  

Are you aware of any incompatibility between Java 6 Update 20 or MacOS 10.6.x and Marvin?

Dear Bob,

I have tried the demo page and other examples, and after using Marvin once the functions worked without much delay. Using Marvin on a new machine or clearing the java cache shows the applet then loads modules in the background, so in the first minutes some functions can be slow, but it should be fast afterwards.

We do not know about any incompatibility between Java 6 Update 20 or MacOS 10.6.x and Marvin. Many users run Marvin on Mac and as far as I know we got no bug report about this since 5.2.0.

Best Regards,

Peter

I just saw another Mac display similar behavior.

Would this post have any relevance?  http://jogamp.762907.n3.nabble.com/Mac-OS-Java-Update-1-6-0-20-breaks-JOGL-applets-td827857.html

One student who was having trouble found that he could improve his Mac's performance by switching the order of the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Java 1.6 in Java Preferences.

Another student who was having trouble found that she could improve her Mac's performance by installing Java 1.5 according to the instructions found here.  (Snow Leopard ships only with Java 1.6.)  

We have found the problems apply to ACE in general, not just MarvinSketch.  For example, we see similar behavior with LewisSketch, our own applet.

Hi Bob,

We know about a security issue in Java 1.6.0_20 that can cause problem if you use an old Marvin.

Newer Java Plugins do not let load-in unsecure contents by signed applets. Please read the following topic.

Browser drops security warning by loading Marvin applets.

 

We have solved the problem by eliminating Class.getResourceAsStream() references to unsecure contents (and load these files another way). This workaround has been available since 5.3.3. If you can not upgrade to newer one, I recommend to change Security settings in the Java Control Panel, as it is described in the above topic.

The security issue is separate from the performance problems.

I see. Thanks for sharing your experience.