A background application does not appear in your Dock. It does not have an Application menu, so its name never appears at the left end of your menu, and you cannot hide it with Command-H or switch to it using the Command-Tab switcher.
Instead, a background application can have a status menu (an icon at the right side of the menu bar), and this is the strategy employed by Dialectic as a background application. Since you cannot use Command-Tab or the Dock to summon Dialectic, you choose Bring to Front from the status menu instead.
Many users prefer the background application mode for a secondary utility application such as Dialectic. If you need to force quit Dialectic when it is running as a background application, use the Activity Monitor application (in your /Applications/Utilities/ folder) to send a force quit command to the utility — there is no need to logout or restart simply to quit Dialectic if it is misbehaving.
However, you may prefer that Dialectic function as a normal application, with the same status as Safari, TextEdit, and so forth. In this case, Dialectic is a foreground application. It has an Application menu (and other normal menus), it appears in the Dock, and you can switch to it using Command-Tab.
Menus
Where Dialectic’s menus are and what they are called depends on whether it is running as a foreground application or a background application.
If Dialectic is running as a background application, then its main menu is a status menu with Dialectic’s icon on the right side of the menubar and is visible even when Dialectic is not the frontmost application. Optionally, the Quick Dial menu, the Recently Dialed menu, and the Address Book menu can appear as status menus as well.
If Dialectic is running as a foreground application, then its main menu is a normal menu visible only when Dialectic is the frontmost application whose title is “Utility”. Optionally, the Quick Dial and Recently Dialed menus can appear as separate menus in the menubar. Even in foreground mode, when the Address Book menu is enabled as a separate menu, it will appear as a status menu on the right side of the menubar even when Dialectic is not the frontmost application.
