RE: Fwd: Guidelines for System Tray icons

>-- Original Message --
>From: Waldo Bastian <[email protected]>
>Subject: Fwd: Guidelines for System Tray icons
>To: [email protected]
>Reply-To: [email protected]
>Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 11:17:14 +0100
>
>
>FYI, replies to [email protected] please.
>
>----------  Forwarded Message  ----------
>
>Subject: Guidelines for System Tray icons
>Date: Thursday 13 March 2003 02:59
>From: Mark McLoughlin <[email protected]>
>To: [email protected], [email protected]
>
>	From reading the KDE guidelines, one difference in opinion that is
>obvious is that in GNOME we're tending towards the idea that an
>application should always quit once you've closed all windows - it
>should never remain "loaded" in the systray as this overloads the
>meaning of the close window button and leads to a confusion over what
>the button does.

This can indeed be confusing. I think the juk program (new in kdemultimed=
ia
in CVS) solves this nicely as it displays a dialog explaining that it is
still running, and how you can quit it totally whenever you close the las=
t
window.

This might not be the greatest solution, but IMO you render the traybar
useless if you remove this feature.

Alternatively i guess it could be made so the programs in question could
have a "hide windows" menu item (the actual wording needs work :), but th=
is
is really still doing the thing you complained about, just in a different=

way.

>  Some cases which make sense:
>
>	+ Applications which display an icon to inform the user of
>	  current application "status", e.g. the number of unread
>	  emails,

This example is bad. How can such a small icon display the number of unre=
ad
mails? I think this would take an applet. Or would you make the icons abl=
e
to be of variable width? The rest of the examples are fine.

>  Some cases which don't:
>
>	+ An application adds an icon to the tray when it starts. The
>	  only "status" the icon shows is that the application is
>	  currently running and the main purpose of the icon is
>	  essentially to provide a shortcut to various application
>	  operations without switching back to the application
>	  itself.

I disagree here. (i dont know what to think of the thing about slow loadi=
ng
applications, i dont think i like the idea of that either)

Examples of trayicons i like: i like keeping juk hidden, yet to have easy=

access to it through the tray icon. I like to see that the alarm daemon
is running, yet i dont want a window. I like being able to easily adjust
the master volume by clicking on the kmix icon and adjusting the slider
that pops up.

You might argue that these should all be applets, but my problem with tha=
t
is that applets take up more room than the traybar icons, and if you want=

to move the icons then you have to do it one at a time, where as i can mo=
ve
the entire traybar in one go. (i use the quicklauncher applet for all my
kicker buttons as well of the same reason about moving the icons around)
And even if all these things were applets, then where would they show up?=

With trayicons they always appear in the traybar. Or do you expect the ap=
plets
to always be present? I wouldn't need/want a juk icon when im not playing=

music for instance.

This is one of these instances where as a developer i find your arguments=

quite reasonable, but as a user i find them inconvinient as i find the cu=
rrent
use of the traybar to both help save screen space and help me organize my=

panel, as well as provide convinient shortcuts and provides a way to make=

sure that a background daemon is running.

I see an applet as something that should present more than just an icon,
like kmix can be displayed as an icon in the traybar, or you can start th=
e
mixer applet and have the mixer control sliders embeded directly in the
panel. Another example could be an xmms trayicon that could hide/unhide
the main window, and provide shortcuts to some of its feature, versus an
xmms applet that would provide controls like play, stop, pause, etc, dire=
ctly
as buttons. (i even think such a thing exists)

Mvh

Troels