Over the next few weeks I’m going to be highlighting some of the new features that are being added to MacVector 11.1. The first of these is support for a great notification system that we all use at MacVector.
Some analyses with MacVector will take seconds and as such are done in the foreground. However, some types of analysis can take literally hours and if performed in the foreground they could tie up your Mac for a long time. MacVector has a tool called the Job Manager, whose sole purpose is to control such long running tasks. Once such a task is run MacVector will pass over control directly to the Job Manager, allowing the user to continue to use MacVector. As subsequent jobs are submitted it will store them in the job queue, only allowing them to run when there is a spare CPU (or core) to do so! Blast, alignments, primer design and sequence assembly are all examples of jobs that are submitted to the Job Manager.
Usually once a job has completed the Job Manager will notify the user using in the usual way by bouncing the MacVector icon in the Dock.
Growl is a third party open notification framework for OS X. It allows the basic notification system used by OS X (i.e. the bouncing icon!), to be replaced by a much more flexible, and potentially less intrusive system. It is widely supported by many OS X apps as a complete replacement for the OS X one.
We’re pleased to say that with MacVector 11.1 we’ve added support for Growl to the Job Manager.
Now whenever a job, that is running in the Job Manger completes it notifies you with a non-intrusive way. For example in the image above a Blast job has finished and Growl notifies you with the default theme, “Smoke”. If you click on the dialog then it will take you to the Job Manager where you can display the results. Otherwise it will quietly fade away. Although you’ll never forget you have results to view as the MacVector icon in the Dock will show the number of completed jobs available in the Job Manager!
MacVector 11.1 will be released very shortly.