thoughts on the systray

[Malte S. Stretz]

On Monday 14 February 2005 08:57 CET Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Sunday 13 February 2005 06:12, Gábor Lehel wrote:
> >[...]
> > replace their taskbar entry entirely with an icon in this area...).
>
> and break UI consistency. no, let's not copy MacOS X here please.

Actually, why not?  This is almost one of the long-outstanding wishes I 
never got to report via b.k.o :)

There are now quite some apps which offer the possibility to be moved to the 
systray, but still a bunch of them can't be (and others which probably 
never will).  One example is KNode -- I have it running 24/7 and it always 
takes up some space in my taskbar which other apps could use better.

A really cool feature would be an additional "Minimize to Traybar" for each 
app.  That way you could store away long-running apps to a place where they 
don't take up so much space on your instantly available Taskbar (my main 
panel just consists only of the taskbar plus a minicli while the traybar is 
on an auto-hidden child panel -- gives me a very big and clean desktop :)

That would actually make the Traybar another kind of Taskbar, but why not?  
The Traybar is the most inconsistent UI thing invented ever, it can't be 
broken much more than it is by design ;~)

Those apps which already support tray icons would have added features in the 
Traybar, all the others just the default ones.

> User: "why are only SOME of my windows in the taskbar?"

Admin: "Because you put the other ones explicitly to the Traybar?"

Per default no app at all should minimize only to the Traybar (including 
KMix and friends).  But if the users chooses deliberately to minimize the 
app to the Traybar, he should know what he did :)

Cheers,
Malte

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