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.