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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: ksytray madness
From:       Mike Hearn <mike () theoretic ! com>
Date:       2003-10-27 23:51:15
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On Mon, 27 Oct 2003 12:36:18 -0600, Sir Aaron J. Seigo scribed thus:
> "nasty hacks" that seem to work just fine for the majority of people who use 
> it.

Well, not really. I've seen users confused by instructions that tell them
to click on an icon that XP helpfully hid for them more than once.
 
> so...... create a system tray in the taskbar.

Almost. More: allow the taskbar to take over one of the jobs the system
tray is currently used for.

> first, this is not how system tray icons work as they may not have an 
> associated window at all.

Sure, this is just for the tray icons that are simply there in order to
summon a window.

> so while some icons would appear in the taskbar, 
> others would then appear in the system tray, probably seemingly randomly to 
> most users. 

Well, this is a thought experiment: "What if we didn't have a system tray
at all?"

> second, this overloads the meaning of buttons in the taskbar and makes the two 
> concepts (windows and "action mini-icons) linked so that to have one you have 
> to have both and they must be right next to each other. sounds like a 
> regression to me.

Depends how the mini-icons are used I guess. For summoning windows, or
performing actions directly related to them, I don't think it'd overload
the meaning too much. If they are used for any random old thing then yeah,
I agree, but that's not much worse than the situation we have today where
system tray icons have no defined meaning at all, really.

> yes, i've already been mulling how to do this since it's a clear and obvious 
> extension of the taskbar. at the same time, if all it only adds to the 
> context menu of the taskbar button then we've hidden the interface completely 
> from most people. i'd much prefer a "this button has a menu" indicator which 
> when clicked on will pop up the action menu for that window.

Maybe. Normally you have to right click on tray icons though, so is this
really much harder to discover? I'm not sure.

> the remaining issue is how to define and popup a menu from one process in 
> another. of course, we face this with a DCOP-driven systray as well.

Yeah. Fiddly, especially to do purely using X.

> we already have this: KNotify. together with passive popups it's rather 
> effective and more apps are using it.

Cool. I need to play with it at some point.

> DBUS is not production code and therefore not used by anyone. when/if DBUS is 
> ready for prime time and when/if KDE adopts DBUS, there will likely be a DCOP 
> bridge/translator and so it won't matter what this is implemented in. if it 
> were done in DBUS today Gaim still wouldn't use it, and neither would any of 
> the KDE apps. if this gets implemented after (if) KDE adopts DBUS, then it 
> will likely be implemented in DBUS.

True that.

> yes, some uses of systray icons are just broken and should be fixed. there are 
> broken implementations using just about every desktop service available, in 
> fact.

Yeah, also true. Makes me feel that developers don't know what the tray is
for, which isn't surprising given its lack of focus.

thanks -mike

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