Do You Like The "System Tray"?

Just wondering. Every system seems to have one, and I don't understand why we still use it. It just seems inefficient to have 3-4 places to access programs. We already have a taskbar/start menu/desktop icons/quick launch in Windows, and Dock/desktop icons/other junk in OSX, and loads and loads of choices in Linux.

Whats the point of having yet another place to look for running programs. It should either be in the "taskbar" (dock for OSX) or invisible. We dont need more confusion.

I guess im an idiot, but I HATE IT SO VERY VERY MUCH!

I think we should take out the system tray and make Virtual Desktops a standard instead. You get even more screen real estate and you can then not worry about clutter than non "trayed" programs would cause.

:rant:

#35962

No, I think your right. I agree with you completely. Windows has about 10 places to start programs from the desktop. There are so many ways, the user is confused with which way to use! OS X has more than one way as well, but the dock suits me fine. Lets see, it has the dock, the desktop... I think thats it. Well, you could always use the finder and go into the applications folder. But thats the place where all of the apps on your disk are located.

#35966

I totally love the system tray!!!

It holds icons for tons of programs I don't want to have in Taskbar or Dock. They occupy little space on my desktop and I can even hide most of them in Windows XP (oh, I love Microsoft!)

The system tray is good for programs that you need to access their settings from time to time, or temporarily turn them off or hide without unloading them (messengers, YzShadow, popup killers, firewalls, etc)

Have a nice day!

Ken

#35977

I said indifferent because although at time I find the System Tray to be helpful, other times I find it very annyoing. I believe the idea is good, its just that it was implemented wrong! It should be 100% customizable by the user. It should be able to be TURNED OFF if the user want it. It really should be more of a "Bonus" feature then a required one. I mean, I appricite it becasue it handles Trillian, Norton, Sound, and QCD player really well, but other things like "NEW HARDWARE FOUND" and the stupid Icon for whenever a perhiperal is plugged in is just retarted. Maybe if the darn thing was a little more cutomizeable, id be a little more happy. But I can agree, it does more good than bad in XP... OS's like 95/98/ME have the system tray work like crap, and I feel really bad for Win2000/95 users who dont have msconfig! OUCH! I have to shut off stuff all of the time! Gee guys, what did we ever do before we had the ability to hide icons? lol!

#35989

Originally posted by contrasutra@Jun 26 2003, 06:35 PM

Just wondering. Every system seems to have one, and I don't understand why we still use it. It just seems inefficient to have 3-4 places to access programs. We already have a taskbar/start menu/desktop icons/quick launch in Windows, and Dock/desktop icons/other junk in OSX, and loads and loads of choices in Linux.

Whats the point of having yet another place to look for running programs. It should either be in the "taskbar" (dock for OSX) or invisible. We dont need more confusion.

I guess im an idiot, but I HATE IT SO VERY VERY MUCH!

I think we should take out the system tray and make Virtual Desktops a standard instead. You get even more screen real estate and you can then not worry about clutter than non "trayed" programs would cause.

:rant:

agree.

redundent and ugly.

My hammer starts pulling my hand towards the system tray.

#35996

@Goku

Guess i'm a moron then i always assumed that your new avatar was holding an axe or something...

#36022

nah its the hammer of justice.

And justice for all. :banging:

(im still installing panther!!! :rant: )

#36023

Originally posted by Aqua-girl@Jun 27 2003, 03:08 AM

i always assumed that your new avatar was holding an axe or something...

Geez, Goku's hammer is punishment enough as it is, but an ax? Ow!

-godpunk

#36027

I don't like the look of the system tray but I do find it extremely useful when I need to undock items from my pc slots, turn off anti virus for driver installs, turn off firewall for certain functions, lose the shadows, call up styleXP for a quick change, alter perameters of various system settings etc.

As I said, it's ugly, however, I can just set all icons to be hidden that I don't need to see and the others I set to show only when something happens (new mail, system update and the like). Yes I do find it very useful as a time saver and I only see it when I need to... where's the problem? It's easier and faster than getting to any of these through other means, unless you have them in the dock. I prefer to have actual real useful programs in there.

Spend five minutes setting up the tray properly and it'll rarely bother you again. It's the QuickLaunch I never use (or see, I hide that too)

:baby:

#36103

Who wants to joing my organization: S.P.E.W.

Society for the Protection of Emoticons and Widgets.

Gokus our first target.

#36105

Originally posted by contrasutra@Jun 27 2003, 01:09 PM

Who wants to joing my organization: S.P.E.W.

Society for the Protection of Emoticons and Widgets.

Gokus our first target.

No let Gokus bashing commence! Go Goku! :order:

#36111

Contra, Goku's hammer reigns supreme. He even used it on himself the other night!

@Sone: Brilliant title under your avatar, my friend. I'll have to use that sometime

-godpunk

#36134

Dood, Goku, that hammer is kinda loud everytime you hit it man, dont you think you could keep it down, I sleep sometimes! lol

#36137

I'll have to agree with soime of the previous comments by liking it for quick access to things such as turning on and off my popup stopper More customization would be good though.

#36139

Man, get Mozilla or Firebird, and kiss that Pop-up-Stopper goodbye. Join the wonderful world of Open Source. (Y)

#36140

IE will always be faster than mozilla or firebird though. thats my primary reason for sticking with ie through the years.

#36173

HA. I love that. There won't be a new version of IE for two years. Do you really think Mozilla will still be slower than. The new version is going final in a week or two, and its much faster.

The only reason IE is a little faster now sometimes is because IE doesnt obey standards, so people have to butcher their websites and not obey standards, hurting everyone else.

#36178

The sys tray is useful for things like the internet connection and messenger icons but everything else is pointless. Especially when programs stick an icon in there without asking you if you want it! :rant:

#36287

all or nothing

you can remove explorer.exe (totally useless and eats up a lot of memory), docks, etc and then only the windows will take place on your screen. you may reach anything with keyboard.

some apps like SoulSeek client is only in the systray - you may use slsk with traymodule app and so on. there are millions of solutions to use different filemanager/taskswitcher/applicationlauncher.

the very best thing in the new macosx is Exposé.. i would like to see it on windoze and i think it's not impossible.

about ie/mozilla/etc:

i read apple.com/safari:

"The fastest browser on the Mac - the best browser on any platform."

BUT safari is only for macosx! how they know its best browser on any platform?????

and there were a diagram about the speed of each browser...

#36300

Well, Safari uses the KHTML rendering engine, so its just as fast as "Konqueror" on Linux. Which frankly, isn't any faster than Gecko in most cases. But then again, i've never done any benchmarks.

#36357

i meant they wrote: "best browser on any platform"

my question: how did they compare safari to another browser on other platforms <---> fact: safari won't run on other platforms.

but it's really offtopic now.

#36365

I agree 100% with contra, Ive totally abandoned IE for Firebird. And its true, the only reason I even keep the stupid out-dated browser aound is simply because some websites wont work with anything BUT! Its really annyoing how MS how to just be big jackasses and make it so that its browser is REQUIRED for some pages. For example, Ill go to miscrosoft.com and I dont get those drop down menu's! If they had just used CSS instead of DHTML then it wouldnt hvae been such a problem but NOOOOOO!

#36370