XFwm4 shade + notification area

[Brian J. Tarricone]

On 12/22/2009 10:11 AM, Auke Kok wrote:
> Olivier Fourdan wrote:
>> On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 5:32 PM, J. Anthony Limon <j at flippo.net> wrote:
>> [...]
>>> Well the panel plugin is called the notification area. Apps such as
>>> Pidgin,
>>> Rhythmbox, etc use it to be minimized to an icon sometimes. Typically to
>>> minimize applications to the notification area you can just click the
>>> icon
>>> (as with Pidgin).
>>>
>>> But if you shade the window first and then try to minimize to the
>>> notification area, nothing happens.
>>
>> Actually, there is no such thing as "iconify to systray", it's a
>> trick, the application unmaps its window itself and adds its icon to
>> the systray (unlike real iconification which is standard, and managed
>> by the window manager).
>
> and this is a very bad trick, which breaks a lot of things

Not really.  It breaks things when implemented poorly.  I'd also blame 
the community for not getting this into a spec.  If you're not going to 
standardize a behavior that people find useful, you have to expect that 
people will figure out how to do it on their own, and you end up with 
inconsistency and hacks that don't behave well everywhere.

> applications like skype and pidgin should minimize to the taskbar
> instead. think about it: what happens when you don't have a notification
> area?

What happens when you don't have a taskbar?  ("Who wouldn't have a 
taskbar?"  Well... who wouldn't have a systray?)  Smart apps will have a 
"Minimize to Systray" option, disabled by default; very smart apps will 
detect whether a systray is present or not and do the right thing.

I prefer that apps like pidgin and skype minimize to the tray.  They 
have windows that are useful and always-present, but they're a 
distraction in the taskbar, in general (hell, I'd prefer that they set 
the skip-taskbar hint all the time, but I can understand why they don't 
by default).

	-brian