Firefox users who have installed the extension and rebooted the browser afterwards need to configure it first before they can make use of the functionality it provides.

The easiest way to do that is to load the about:addons page in the Firefox address bar. Locate the TrayhotKey extension in the listing and select options to open the preferences.

The options are divided into three different groups. First a hotkey area at the top which can be used to change the default Ctrl+’ hotkey to another one. Please note that this hotkey triggers one of the “aces”. New users may assume that the hotkey lets them minimize Firefox to the system tray. This is only partially correct. This hotkey hides Firefox on the system. The browser window disappears from the taskbar and is not displayed in the system tray. Experienced users can still find out that the browser is running with the help of the Windows task manager or a process explorer. Another tap on the hotkey brings Firefox back to the front.

The tray group in the options handle if and when the Firefox icon is displayed in the system tray. Always show tray will display a permanent icon in the tray, while minimize window to tray only when the browser minimizes. This option changes the default behavior so that the browser is minimized to the system tray area in Windows. Close window to tray finally takes over the close Firefox process. A click on the x in the Firefox window usually closes the browser. If the close window to tray option is enabled, it will instead minimize the browser to the system tray.

The remaining options handle the the web browser’s opacity and transparency levels. Here it is possible to make the browser window transparent to see what’s underneath.

TrayHotKey adds two core features to the browser. First the ability to hide Firefox on a system with the help of a hotkey, and second the option to minimize the browser to the system tray.

Firefox users can download TrayHotKey from the official Mozilla Firefox add-on repository.

Desktop Tray Launcher offers a in many cases better solution. The program basically scans the computer desktop on start and adds all shortcuts and files to a list. This list is then made available by clicking on its icon in the Windows system tray.

A very ingenious and comfortable way of loading files and opening programs on the desktop.

Simply right-click the program icon in the system tray to display a list of all shortcuts and files on the desktop. A left-click on any item in the list will open it right away.

What makes this even more interesting is the fact that it is possible to hide the desktop items without interfering with the program’s functionality. Users basically get a clean desktop and still the option to launch the desktop shortcuts easily.

Desktop Tray Launcher will work with all recent versions of the Microsoft operating system, including 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7. The program requires the Microsoft .net Framework 4.0, which needs to be installed on the system.

Pay a visit to the developer’s website if you want to download Desktop Tray Launcher.

Although many tend to ignore the Notification Area, it’s a system that is often crucial to the efficiency of your desktop. In this article I am going to introduce you to the new and improved KDE Notification Area.

Before we start

If you are not using KDE 4.5, you can check out my article on upgrading to 4.5 (see ), you can also check out more about 4.5 in my articles: The KDE 4.5 Semantic Desktop, Using the KDE 4.5 Search and Launch Containment Activity, KDE 4.5 Desktop Activities Explained, and Update KDE to 4.5 and experience true improvement. Once you have KDE updated you can then start getting used to some of the new and/or updated features.

Speaking of updated features…back to the Notification Area.

I will assume you know what the Notification area is and does. And with that said…

The new look

Figure 1

With the new Notification area the KDE team chose a very clean set of monochromatic icons (see Figure 1). this makes the new look about as clean and integrated as any notification area has ever looked on a desktop. In Figure 1, the actual Notification Area starts from the right of the divider. The first icon in my Notification Area is the DropBox icon (directly left of the scissors). The bubble on the far right is the button to click to open up the Panel Tool Box (which allows you to configure the Panel).

The new notification system

Figure 2

The notification system has been streamlined for 4.5. Instead of getting popup bubble notifications for every event, a popup menu-like window will appear giving you all of your notifications. And you can access these notifications at any time.  In Figure 2 you see a notification pop up as it happens. If you want to access those notifications after the fact, simply click the “i” icon,

Configuring the Notification Area

In order to configure the Notification Area you need to right-click the divider to the left of the Notification Area. When you do this you will see the System Tray Settings menu option. Click on that to open the configuration window.

Figure 3

From the configuration window (see Figure 3) you can configure what information to show, the visibility of each entry (if an entry is hidden, auto-hidden, or always visible), keyboard shortcuts (there are none by default), and you can share the widget across a network.

A good example of an entry is the Printer status icon. If you are one to always want to know what is going on with your printer, you could set the Printer Status to Always Visible. This way you could always have instant access to the print queue. Or, if there are entries you never need (such as Blutooth) you could set them to always hidden.

Final thoughts

We most always take the Notification Area for granted. This is especially true when the application is as clean and well designed as the KDE 4.5 Notification Area. KDE 4.5 has come a long, long way from it’s sketchy 4.0 beginnings. Now, KDE is as useful, streamlined, and responsive (if not more so) as that of GNOME and any other desktop available.

GBirthday is very easy to use and allows you to set up a blinking reminder that allows you to decide how many days +/- to continue reminding you that a birthday is either pending or missed. In this article I am going to show you how to set up and use this wonderful little tool that will keep you from having friends and family upset that you missed their special day.

Features

• Easily integrates into many tools.
• Blinking notification area reminder.
• Released under GPL v. 2.
• Written in python and pygtk.
• Tiny footprint.

Installation

The installation is simple. As GBirthday should be found in your standard distribution repositories, you can install GBirthday with the following steps:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software tool.
2. Search for “birthday” (no quotes).
3. Mark gbirthday for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.

Or, if you’re more fond of command line installation, you could follow these steps:

For Ubuntu:

1. Open up a terminal window.
2. Issue the command sudo apt-get install gbirthday.
3. Enter your sudo password.
4. When finished close the terminal.

For Fedora:

1. Open up a terminal window.
2. Su to the root user.
3. Issue the command yum install gbirthday.
4. When complete close the terminal window.

Figure 1

After installation, you can start GBirthday by clicking Applications > Office > gbirthday. When the application starts you will see no splash screen or any window open. All you will get is a small icon now resting in your Noticiation Area (see Figure 1). The icon will show a small calendar page with a small orange birthday cake and candle below it (looks more like a pumpkin to me).  If, of course, there are any pending birthdays, that icon will immediately start blinking.

Usage

Let’s take a look at how this simple tool is used. I will illustrate GBirthday’s usage with the Evolution groupware suite. When you create a contact in Evolution there is a Personal Information tab. In that tab you will notice (under Miscellaneous) a section for Birthday information. Fill out the birthday in the form MM/DD/YYYY (or click the down arrow and select the birthday from the calendar that pops up). Once you have filled out all the information click OK.

Figure 2

Now, when there is a pending birthday that GBirthday icon will blink. If you click on that icon a popup window will appear giving you information on the days (or past or upcoming) birthday (see Figure 2).

As I mentioned you can configure GBirthday to remind you +/- any number of days. This means you can get a user-configured amount of days heads up before a birthday is coming or is past. To do this right click on the icon and select Preferences. In the Preferences window you can set 2 options:

Past birthdays: This is a negative number and represents how many days past will GBirthday remind you.

Next birthdays: This is a positive number and represents how many days in the future GBirthday will remind you.

Final thoughts

If your memory isn’t what it once was, or you have tons of birthdays to remember, a tool like GBirthday might be just the thing you need. It’s unobtrusive enough to not get in your way but persistent enough to make sure you remember those birthdays.

This can be a problem because of two reasons: The customize dialog will grow over time with new notification icons added but none removed. It will take longer to customize the system tray icons. The second is privacy as the icons will reveal information about programs that have been used on the computer system in the past.

The customize window which becomes available after clicking on customize in the system tray area can only be used to hide or show notification icons but there is no way of deleting or removing old icons.

All icons are cached in the Windows Registry. The easiest way to remove the past notification icons – without software – is therefor to delete the Registry keys that contain the cache.

Here is how you can remove old notification icons from the Windows 7 system tray.

• Press [Windows R], type [regedit] and hit [enter]
• Navigate to the Registry key HKCU \Software \Classes \LocalSettings \Software \Microsoft \Windows \CurrentVersion \TrayNotify
• Make a backup of the Registry key by right-clicking on TrayNotify and selecting Export.
• Now delete the following two Registry keys: IconStreams and PastIconsStream
• Open the Windows Task Manager with [Ctrl Shift Esc]
• Terminate the explorer.exe process
• Click on File > New Task Run and enter explorer.exe to reload the explorer process

This removes all icons that are currently not in use from the system tray. Users who prefer a software solution can try Tray Cleaner instead.

SE-TrayMenu is provided as a portable version and installer. The program places an icon in the Windows system tray upon startup which will display a list of programs when hovering the mouse over the icon. A click with the left mouse-button will launch a selected program immediately.

The list of programs can be customized in the program’s settings so that the most commonly used programs become available in the menu. It is furthermore possible to add a unique keyboard shortcut to some or all of the programs so that they can be launched with that shortcut as well.

The settings contain additional options to change the layout and color scheme of the program. Several templates are available as well as the means to create custom layouts and color schemes.

The computer memory usage of SE-TrayMenu lies in the region of 10 to 15 Megabytes which is fairly acceptable. The computer program is compatible with most Microsoft operating systems including Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. Both the portable version and the installer can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

A user wanting to lockup these icons would need to make them visible which can be easily done from the available customize link.

All visible system tray icons will be listed on the custom web page. Each in its own row with information that include the name, system path, description, company and its icon.

A click on an item will open a detailed overview of that application (if available) that contains actions at the top, descriptions and technical information at the bottom of the page. The actions listed at the top can be used to perform various task including terminating the process responsible for the system tray icon and uninstalling the application.

System Tray Cleaner is an easy to use system manager that can assist the user in identifying system tray icons. The majority of Windows users on the other hand might prefer the manual way of researching system tray applications due to a number of reasons including privacy concerns. Users who want to test the application can download it from the developer’s website. It is compatible with most versions of Microsoft Windows including Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Browser Tray Switch by Mouser has been designed with a second aspect in mind. Mouser is using the software program to define a default browser in Windows that is not allowed to connect to the Internet. This ensures that malicious software programs cannot launch the default browser. If he needs to access the Internet with the default browser he simply switches it using his software program for the time it is needed.

Another simple application for the program would be to set the default browser in Windows. Many users do not like fiddling around in the Windows Registry and this application provides an easy intuitive way to do that.

The application will automatically create a backup of the settings during the first startup. It will also automatically detect the installed web browsers (unless they are portable) and add them to the right-click menu of the system tray application.

Minime bundles the minimized windows into one System Tray icon. If you are the type of user who usually has dozens of icons in the Windows System Tray then you might want to consider switching from your favorite Tray Minimizer application to Minime.

While running Minime in the background users can make use of the keyboard shortcut [CTRL Shift Z] to minimize the active window to the System Tray. Windows can be reactivated by either choosing a single window or by selecting the Show All option.

Users are reporting problems with 64-bit editions of Windows Vista. Other editions and Windows operating systems should run fine. Minime uses about 6 Megabytes of computer memory when running in the background.

It would not really make sense to place the web browser in the system tray because a web browser is usually an active application that does not do much if the user is not interacting with it.

Tray Everything is a small application that comes in a portable and installation version. It can practically minimize every window to the system tray and provides a few interesting features like password protecting minimized windows or hiding them completely from the system tray.

The program displays all windows that are currently opened in its program interface and will minimize them to the system tray upon double-clicking them. Additional options are supplied to add a minimize to system tray button to all windows or to hijack the minimize button to always minimize to the system tray. This can be configured for all or only selected applications.

Another interesting feature of Tray Everything is the option to automatically minimize windows to the system tray after a certain period of time. Add hotkey support and compatibility with all Windows operating systems since Windows 95 but excluding Windows Vista and you got a versatile application for everyone who wants to clean up the open program windows on his computer.

If you are running low on system resources you could use the windows system tray software Trayconizer instead which uses roughly half of the system resources of Tray It mainly because it completely manages to do without an interface. Trayconizer is a command line driven application that can be best used by creating shortcuts that point to the applications that should be placed in the Windows system tray when minimized.

Trayconizer is portable as well and uses a little bit more than 10 Kilobytes of hard drive space. The user can use the following command line parameter to move the selected application into the Windows System tray when the user minimizes it.

/path/to/trayconizer.exe “path/to/application”. For example c:\trayconizer “d:\apps\firefox.exe”. Trayconizer makes use of one additional parameter -minimize which when used starts the application minimized in the Windows system tray.

The easiest way to work with Trayconizer would be to create a shortcut to Trayconizer. A right-click on the shortcut and the selection of properties makes it possible to add the “path/to/application” to the Target form field. A click on the shortcut would then launch the desired application normally and would minimize it to the Windows system tray when minimized.

A vertical taskbar on the other hand displays the time, date and the weekday in the system tray. The best way to create a custom solution would be to use a third party tool like Timekeeper which can fully replace the Windows clock. Timekeeper adds itself to the available Toolbars of the Taskbar which can be selected by right-clicking the taskbar.

The Windows clock can be disabled in the same right-click menu as well. Timekeeper basically can display date and time information in multiple ways to suite the needs of the user. It comes with predefined time and date formats that can be added with just a click and custom ones where the user can pick the information that he wants to see.

Data can be placed separately in various formats. It is for example possible to display the time in 24 or 12 hour format with or without leading zeros. Several information are unique to the application and not provided by the Windows system clock. This includes displaying the timezone as well as day and week of year.

The software adds also visual elements that can be changed. The user can select an alignment for the clock, a text color, background color or choose a transparent background and even the font. That’s great if a custom theme is being used or if the user wants a larger font for the time so that he can see it better.

The bookmarks are then displayed in the usual order including submenus. A left-click on a bookmark opens that bookmark. The real beauty of Links 2 Tray is that it provides access to bookmarks of all three major browsers. The configuration provides settings for Internet Explorer’s Favorites, Firefox’s Bookmarks.html file and Opera.

Firefox changed the way bookmarks are handled with Firefox 3 which means that the user should export the bookmarks into html format once in a while to be able to use them in Links 2 Tray.

Firefox is not explicitly mentioned but it’s possible to add its executable in the Netscape field. One set of bookmarks will be the primary set which is immediately available after left-clicking the system tray icon while the other two are available in folders in that menu. Make sure you set the primary to the bookmarks you use the most.

Bookmarks were opened in Internet Explorer by default but I was able to change that by exchanging the Internet Explorer url with the Firefox one. From then on the bookmarks were opened in Firefox by default. If you prefer Opera just add the Opera executable in that field.

It’s probably no problem to add any other browser instead of the three ones mentioned by simply replacing their executables.

If you like a more beautiful appearance of Windows you could hide all system tray icons. The programs would still be running in the background but the icons would not be visible anymore. It’s possible to hide the icons using a Registry setting. Press Windows R, type regedit and hit enter.

Now navigate to the Registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER \Software \Microsoft \Windows \CurrentVersion \Policies \Explorer and check if the DWORD entry NoTrayItemsDisplay is already available in the left pane. If it is not create a new DWORD with that name. Now double-click the entry and change the value to 1.

The left image is a picture of my system tray and the left one a picture of it after applying the Registry setting. Note that you have to log off or restart the computer before you can see the change. Found at the How to Geek.

Adding feeds is really simple. You can either drag and drop feeds right from the internet or add feeds manually by supplying the RSS and Atom url or OPML file. I was not able to find out how to add submenus manually but this can be done by exporting your feeds into an OPML file and adding that file to Taskable. The structure will remain.

source: cybernetnews

It would be much nicer if Pandora could be minimises to the system tray instead. This would mean that there would not be another window cluttering your workspace. Dan created a small application that makes it possible to run Pandora in the system tray. His tool acts as a wrapper application and works fine.

There are of course other means to achieve the same result. Some days ago I wrote a story about rbtray which basically is able to minimise every window to the system tray. This should work with Pandora as well.

Finally I also found a way to import the Pandora radio stream into winamp. You might want to take a look at this article as well.

RbTray has only one purpose, but this one is a really useful one. It adds the Minimize to Tray command to every window option. I was able to minimize firefox, my ftp program and many more to the system tray. Encountered none that rejected to be minimized to the tray.

Oh, it has one more feature. It also adds a always on top option to every window. The freeware can be downloaded from the website link given above, the download is really slow but thankfully the tool is not that big. Options are available after installing the program.