Views

These choices are similar to the options you'll see on the Jabber.. Preferences... View tab as described in the Preferences section, except that setting these options in the main View menu takes immediate effect; in contrast, the purpose of the items on the Jabber... Preferences... View tab is to set the default appearance in a persistent manner, i.e. what you'll see the next time you launch BuddySpace.

Check and uncheck (tick and untick) the choices displayed in the Views menu to achieve the following:

  • 'Messages window' enables the display of a tab/window for one-off messages, as distinct from interactive chat sessions (you can right-click on any user name in your roster to send a message instead of having a chat session).
  • 'Status window' enables the display of a tab/window showing some of the innards of Jabber communication.
  • 'Debug window' is of interest primarily to BuddySpace developers.
  • 'Only online contacts' displays only those users in your roster who are actually logged in at the moment, rather than displaying the entire list.
  • 'Force messages into chat window' converts the one-off email-like messages that would otherwise appear in the dedicated 'Messages' pane into a chat-like message, which some users find more convenient.
  • 'Compact view' shrinks the top menu bar to a single super-menu item called 'Menu', and displays every other menu choice as a list embedded within that one. Figure 10 shows a typical compact view, and Figure 11 shows how all the menus become embedded within the one master Menu, and can be traversed appropriately to un-do the compact view.


Figure 10. Compact view (note there's only one master Menu item).


Figure 11. Going through the compact 'menu of menus', just about to un-select 'Compact view'

  • 'Dock windows' (recommended) means that when new chat windows and other message windows appear they are automatically 'docked' as a tab within the main or 'master' BuddySpace window. They can always be 'floated off' separately and re-docked later on.
  • 'Scroll tabs' turns all the multiple chat and map windows into a single line of tabs that will scroll to the left and right (instead of stacking up vertically). This option depends on Java J2SE JRE 1.4 or higher; for JRE 1.3 the option is simply ignored.
  • 'Look and Feel' lets you select from among several options that alter the general colour scheme and menu/button appearance to look like that of typical Java applications (Metal), Unix interfaces (CDE/Motif), Windows, or Macintosh Aqua (illustrated in Figure 12 below). On a Windows machine, selecting the Windows look and feel will allow you to alter the appearance to match whatever you have set using your Control Panel... Display... Appearance options. Changing the Look and Feel here in the main View menu take immediate effect, but does not affect what you will see the next time you launch BuddySpace unless you go to the Jabber... Preferences... View tab and select save, so there is no 'launch time' processing speed penalty.
  • 'HTML view tab' brings up a very simple web browser, but without the full functionality you may be used to from a typical Internet Explorer or Netscape browser configuration.