Open Bug 183323 Opened 22 years ago Updated 4 years ago

Minimize all windows to system tray (systray, notification area)

Categories

(SeaMonkey :: UI Design, enhancement)

Product:
SeaMonkey
Component:
UI Design
Platform:
x86
Windows XP
Type:
enhancement
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

People

(Reporter: netdragon, Unassigned)

References

Details

When wanting to clean up your screen, some programs allow you to minimize all windows (the entire application) to the system tray (systray, notification area). That way, they aren't in the taskbar, but can be recalled by double-clicking on the icon in the systray, or something of that nature. I didn't file it under Quicklaunch, because it should happen even without quicklaunch enabled. In that case, the systray icon would appear and dissapear when you unminimized the application, and quicklaunch would never be enabled. Mirc allows this behavior. I am not really a fan of this, but I'm sure some people would want it, and someone was asking me about it. Someone said MyIE2 (which extends IE's abilities) has this: http://www.ruihehang.com/myie2/html_en/home.htm
See also, Bug 183333 on Auto-hiding the sidebar. This is not a dupe of that bug. (Just so we don't waste our time on that)
Ooops sorry, wrong bug.
IMHO, "Minimizing all windows" should be a Window Manager function, not the application. I know that Windooze doesn't have that (but Mac OS does for instance), but that's another matter.
well, winXP (among other OSs) does not provide a generic "minimize to systray" function itself, so i think the application should be responsible for this (and many already provide this feature). i'd regard minimizing mozilla to tray extremely useful especially for checking my mailbox regularly without mozilla mailnews cluttering up my taskbar .. :)
Yes, I vote for this too I would like minimized systray Mozilla to check new mail and check selected locations for update if possible. For example Pegasus Mail has this feature and this feature is the only one why I didn't switch to Mozilla with emails (as I would like because Pegasus's support for other languages then english is terrible...) Please do not make this feature WinXP only ;-) I use win2k....
*** Bug 193850 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I second this. Minimizing to the system tray is *very* useful especially for those who run Mailnews on Windows. I agree, the Window Manager should take care of this, but then it's not like we have a choice on Win32.
*** Bug 205811 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 207300 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
handy tool to do just that (for windows) http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=26071
*** Bug 205811 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
While bug 205811 may be a dupe of this, there was a good suggestion brought up by Uther to add a preference governing this: "A good thing would be a preference menu like the new windows one: Minimize component: (list with: Navigator,Mail,Download manager...) ( ) to taskbar ( ) to system tray " To me, that seems like a good way to implement this.
Is this something we really want a preference for? Couldn't we just provide a button somewhere on the UI that performs this function? A preference seems like a bad idea not only because it adds another preference, but because users might only want to do this part of the time. A button somewhere on the UI (such as on the right side of the status bar) would perform the functionality without relying on preferences.
I think it is valid to have a preference addressing what the minimize button (a standard OS widget) should do. If you wish to be able to do both from the UI then this is probably a separate RFE.
Its not a seperate RFE since I am arguing against putting this in the preferences window, not about having both possibilities. We could add another button to the title bar, except for the fact that Windows XP allows theming. We might be able to install a message handler that detects when you ctrl+click the minimize button. The second best choice would be putting a tacky in the status area. Besides unecessary UI (which could be dealt with by making this a "hidden" pref), we need to discuss whether this is something people would want to allow to happen exclusive of the other kind of minimization. There is an advantage of being able to activate this through the UI only when they need it instead of having it happen all the time.
I can some advantage in being able to use either method. I think users would also benefit from being able to specifiy a default action. Any addition to the top level UI could not be justified. Messing with the standard XP titlebar controls would be a usability disaster. The discoverability of ctrl-click or similar is quite low, though probably the best solution if this functionality is to be offered. My vote goes to adding a pref, hidden if necessary, for the default action to be settable. A better UI might be with a checkbox rather than radio (as suggested in comment #12). Since there are only two choices. e.g. [x] Hide (component) from taskbar on minimize. Alternately a popup could be displayed on first minimize, which sets a hidden pref. (this is done by win media player 9 with the taskbar mini player).
Hixie: I always trust your judgement on these kinds of things. What do you think the best way to go about this from a UI perspective would be?
Microsoft have stated quite clearly in their UI guidelines that the notification area is, well, a notification area, and not a task bar. Applications should never "minimise" to the notification area, and should only show an icon there while there is something to notify the user about (like, new mail, or a message in chatzilla). However, if we want to blindly violate Microsoft's UI guidelines, I would say that the way to do this would be to add a new menu item to the application's system menu (the one that appears when you right-click the taskbar button). In addition, for power users, doing this behaviour on a shift-click of the "minimise" button would be the way to go, IMHO. We shouldn't have any prefs for this, and it should not be a per-component thing, since we shouldn't have components. If it is implemented, it should be done at a level where this would automatically be picked up by the standalone applications without them having to do anything. Mind you, I'm no UI expert so what do I know.
Assignee: sgehani → jag
>However, if we want to blindly violate Microsoft's UI guidelines, I would say >that the way to do this would be to add a new menu item to the application's >system menu (the one that appears when you right-click the taskbar button). Agreed. And this would also work when right-clicking the title bar of the window. >In addition, for power users, doing this behaviour on a shift-click of the >"minimise" button would be the way to go, IMHO. It appears (from message spying) we need to trap the WM_NCLBUTTONDOWN message with nHittest HTMINBUTTON followed by a WM_LBUTTONUP with MK_SHIFT. We probably don't handle these messages as of yet, so that will require modification of the widget code. >it should be done at a level where this would automatically be picked up by the >standalone applications without them having to do anything. That would be in widget I imagine, but I think we should give the stand-alone applications a means to turn this behavior off. We could send a message to higher-up standalone application code to process the request and respond whether the window should be minimized or left as is. We will also want to query the stand-alone application whether to add the entry to the system menu that you get from right-clicking the title-bar or minimized taskbar entry. I guess both of those would be done together and if one is enabled, the other would be, so we just need a way for the application to notify the toolkit that it is enabling/disabling this behavior upon startup (or any other time).
I just wanted to point out that Mozilla can already be minimized the the task bar (Quick Launch in Mozilla preferences), so isn't Mozilla already violating Microsoft's UI guidelines? Anyway, I would say that it doesn't matter what Microsoft had in mind for the "notification area", the people who use Windows have decided that it is a "task bar", and I'm ok with that. On the issue, I would say it should be a preference, similar to the way that Winamp handles it (gives you an option to minimize to tray, task bar, or both). I'm really only interested in seeing this done in Mozilla Thunderbird, as the Mozilla Suite can already be placed in task bar. It would be nice if Mozilla could continue to check mail and download things, while all of it's windows are closed (and while Mozilla resides in the task bar) though.
In my previous post, I wrote "task Bar" a lot. That should have been "system tray". I thought of some more: Minimizing the browser window to the task bar doesn't make much sense, imo. The browser window would be better organized, as a task bar application (normal), with multiple windows in tabs. I'm not sure browser windows should be placable in the system tray. Mail applications and Download Managers could be easily justified, though, even by Microsoft's UI standards. Both applications do a lot of notifying ;-) . Just my 2 cents.
just because mozilla has bugs doesn't mean we should introduce more bugs. and note that mozilla doesn't minimize to the system notification area, it just sticks its ugly head there when you use quicklaunch.
I can see your point about not adding new bugs - a very important thing ;-). At any rate, I think that placing a download manager or email client in the notification area is not a bug by either of our definitions – a browser window is another story. Currently if Mozilla Mail has downloaded mail, it puts a little open envelope with a down arrow in the notification area. It would be wonderful if you could set the mail program to check mail, and notify you in the tray if you get mail, by changing from closed envelope to an open envelope (as an example) – without the need for the mail window to be open. In preferences it could be called “Check Mail in Background” or “Monitor my incoming mail” or something. I think that coming up with specific instances where minimizing to the notification area is appropriate is the way to go. Creating a global "minimize this window" to the system tray option, seems like over kill, and is an inelegant solution, imo. That kind of functionality seems better left to extensions and third party software (there is software already available that will allow a user to minimize anything they want to the notification area).
This feature request might be good for Mozilla 3.0 or something, but currently there are a lot more pressing issues unless someone wants to volunteer to do this. Even the full-screen feature still has bugs. I agree with timeless that we wouldn't want to take the chance of adding more UI bugs when we are in this transition stage in the project. Another thing about Microsoft guidelines is that they are often quite sketchy and poorly designed (or likely written by lawyers ;-) ). You can see this by such things as how applications bloat the system registry for EVERYTHING when they could have their own registry .dat files in their program directory by using the registry API for everything but registered DLL locations and the location of the application registry. Another example is how Microsoft tells applications its alright to put program folders in the root of "Program Files" (or equivalent) which is taking a lot of liberty when some people are very anal about their disk layout. It also says to just dump program icons into the start menu > programs when users might not want this (and they do it with Office, which drives some people crazy). Therefore, Microsoft's guidelines should only be followed if they make sense.
*** Bug 232245 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This will be very, very cool if the enhancement will be added as soon as possible : for me (and my use) this is the ONLY one thing in thuderbird that stop me to say that the soft is PERFECT. I know that there's a lot of pressing bugs and features that are perhaps more needed, but for the end user like me (and the 10's people that i convinced to "Switch" to open source software, like Thunderbird, Firefox and openoffice) it's truly a VERY important bonus. Keep us aware of the developpement of the feature please. I stay tune. And thanks for ALL the open source community coding, making graphism, websites, and so much for us all, poor mortals of non coding people.
I'd also love to see a minimize to tray function. The problem IMHO is really making the user experience worse. To me it was completely unclear at the beginning, when I can expect Mozilla to check Mails [ ] If a browser window was open [ ] If the process is still in the memory [ ] If a mail window was open [X] If a mail window has at least been opened once and at least one browser window stays open, but not if the quickstart process is still in the memory. Gave me quite a headache to figure that out. A minimize to tray icon for mail would definetely take care of that problem. People would leave the mail window open all day, just minimize it to the tray. Best, Bjoern
What do you think of this? If it is minimized to the notification area, it is running in the background and notifying you that the program is running, and has not received any email. If it receives email, the icon changes, and you get one of those little sliding things, explaining how many messages you got. This could be done for an individual "inbox" window in Mozilla Suite, or could be used for the main window in Thunderbird. (In the case of Mozilla Suite, something could just be added that would check for mail and return the number of emails received - maybe using the same function that the Windows Welcome screen uses.) I think that is consistent with Microsoft's explaination for what the notification area is, and is consistent with the way the notification is used by other communication software (like Microsoft's own MSN Messenger). I'd like to see this implemented as either a minimize to tray button on the Title bar next to the minimize button (like eMule has), or a preference that will change the default behavior for the minimize or close (preferably close) buttons.
Product: Core → Mozilla Application Suite
For what it's worth, a lot of the design issues and potential problems have already been handled in the MinimizeToTray extension. http://minimizetotray.mozdev.org/ If this feature ever gets worked on again, contact me or Mook at the link I provided, and we can help you with what we've seen so far.
(In reply to comment #0) > When wanting to clean up your screen, some programs allow you to minimize all > windows (the entire application) to the system tray (systray, notification > area). > > That way, they aren't in the taskbar, but can be recalled by double-clicking > on the icon in the systray, or something of that nature. > > I didn't file it under Quicklaunch, because it should happen even without > quicklaunch enabled. In that case, the systray icon would appear and dissapear > when you unminimized the application, and quicklaunch would never be enabled. > > Mirc allows this behavior. > > I am not really a fan of this, but I'm sure some people would want it, and > someone was asking me about it. > > Someone said MyIE2 (which extends IE's abilities) has this: > http://www.ruihehang.com/myie2/html_en/home.htm I too would like to see a way to implement a minimizer into Thunderbird to the task tray, much the same way Incredimail does it. Allowing for one to rt click on it and bring up a list of things one could do, such as compose and e-mail, check mail, open it's properties, open the client, check mail, etc. While double clicking on it would open the main window up altogether. This way one doesn't have the annoying button in the taskbar getting in the way. You can put it as either a hidden option in the options or a button on the front of the client to toggle it, for that matter, one could make a hidden option to turn on/off the button on the front of the client which toggles it as well as set the default option to either minimize to tray or not. Personally I don't see a reason to have it immediately clickable on the front of the client as long as it's an actual working tray option.
For Thunderbird and Sunbird specifically, I think minimizing to the system tray is expected behevior. People post about it as a wishlist item all the time. There are extensions to make that happen and third party software to do it as well. Given that, it's definately something people want. Making newbies seek out extensions to make a program do what they expect it to do anyway is a poor idea. And while minimizing to the tray may seem trivial, I probably wouldn't use TBird if someone hadn't come along to make the thundertray program. It's essential to the program working the way I think it should and it astounds me that it hasn't been added to the basic Windows build.
I think this would be a nice feature to have in xulrunner also.. I can think of a number of appz that i wouldn't want in my taskbar ( osx-dashboard like apps )..
Depends on: 325353
Any updates?
Current workaround: Download the xpi file of "MinimizeToTray revived" from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/minimizetotray-revived/ and install it via the Add-ons Manager's gear menu.
So I just read https://blog.mozilla.org/thunderbird/2017/12/new-thunderbird-releases-and-new-thunderbird-staff/ and it stated: "While Thunderbird 58 is equally stable and offers further cutting-edge improvements to Thunderbird users, the user community is starting to feel the impact of Mozilla platform changes which are phasing out so-called legacy add-ons." I am wondering how this will impact addons such as MinimizeToTray revived? This is quite a crucial addon to me since I have Thunderbird open 24/7, and having it open as a minimized window would be really annoying for my workflow since I often tab between several windows.
The impact is quite simple: MinimizeToTray revived does not work on the post-quantum versions. Native support for this would be a god-send.
Also, "MinimizeToTray revived" has the (admittedly small) issue described in bug 1445176.
PLEASE add support for this feature to be added to thunderbird 60 as minimizetotray revived no longer works.
spaceshipgalore: This is a SeaMonkey UI bug. You would need to file one for Thunderbird. The changes would not be implemented in shared code.
Please, implement this feature as standard, Thunderbird needs to be placed in tray area when minimized, and not to stay in taskbar! Please allow this as an option at least in settings.
Yes it would also be interesting for me to have this feature, either through a plugin or through application settings. I actually close the application and so don't receive notifications for new emails because I don't like to have it open in the taskbar. Has anybody found a way to add this feature in Thunderbird 60+ ?

(In reply to mike keepsake from comment #41)

Has anybody found a way to add this feature in Thunderbird 60+ ?

You can use this extension - I am using it myself and it does what it says

I used the addon "Minimize to Tray" for years. I can´t belive that not every user like this feature.
And since it does not work with Thunderbird anymore i miss this every day.
PLEASE add this to the programm.

(In reply to forumpost from comment #43)

I used the addon "Minimize to Tray" for years. I can´t belive that not every user like this feature.
And since it does not work with Thunderbird anymore i miss this every day.
PLEASE add this to the programm.

A proper window manager is something you will definitely appreciate.
I myself am using this:
https://github.com/navossoc/MenuTools
but there are also tools that directly add buttons to programs' windows.
It's a shame Windows is called "Windows" if it doesn't handle basic window tasks like pin on top, transparency, minimize to tray.

Assignee: jag+mozilla → nobody
QA Contact: pawyskoczka
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