634656 - New-mail notification icon hiding in Windows 7 taskbar by default

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(MailNews Core :: Backend, defect)

Description

[rsx11m]

In Windows XP, the new-mail icon stays in the taskbar for both Thunderbird and SeaMonkey. Like many, I'm not always looking at the screen and the notification or balloon  disappears after a while (and with it the icon in the taskbar). Hence it's difficult to tell after a couple of seconds if new mail arrived, e.g., when the mail windows are covered by other windows, and you have to focus the mail window to see if something (or nothing) arrived since last time.

The workaround I figured is to right-click on the icons in the task bar, select "Customize notification icons", and to change the mail icon from "Only show notifications" to "Show icon and notification". Now it will stay until I actually read a new mail, problem solved, but rather hard to discover.

In the linked-to tutorial, a registry tweak is mentioned (option #3) to modify that setting, but only globally and not on a per-application basis. Given that the new-mail icon is technically an application icon, but only shown when new mail is actually to be notified about, settings a default to always show icon and notifications for this specific purpose should be justified. The hope is that some Windows 7 registry entry will allow for that, then either on startup or installation the mode for the mail-notification icon could be set if the underlying operating system is identified as Windows 7.

Comment 1

[rsx11m]

This affects equally Thunderbird 3.1.8/3.3a3pre and SeaMonkey 2.0.12/2.1b3pre builds, thus it's not restricted to trunk or its new balloon notification.

Comment 2

[Ian Neal]

Not sure if this will be of any use:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12550445/registry-setting-to-make-icon-always-show-in-the-windows-7-tray

Comment 3

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

rsx11m, Do you still see this issue?

(In reply to Ian Neal from comment #2)

Not sure if this will be of any use: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12550445/registry-setting-to-make-icon-
always-show-in-the-windows-7-tray

perhaps this would help bug 313628 ?

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Danny, have you ever seen this/can reproduce?

Comment 5

[Dan Pernokis]

I just checked my Windows settings for TB -- surprised to find it is currently set to "Hide Icon & Notifications".

What I see is an always-on-top popup window announcing the current stream of emails that just came in, or the most recent if none from a previous round got read in the meantime. This lasts about 30 seconds, then disappears. It's a good notification if I'm AT the screen, but I miss it if I turn my head or leave it unattended. I also get a persistent icon notice in the system tray (but it's in the "hidden" system tray area, by choice). I look here and usually check my email screen often enough to know what's come in.

I happened to have unread email on hand just now, so I pulled the icon to the main system tray area. The icon persisted until I read these emails -- that is, I changed their READ status buttons to "read". Then I sent myself an email -- got the 30-second popup, then as it faded, an icon showed up new in the system tray and persisted until I read the new letter.

So I would say the notification is working as it should (and as requested by Bug #313628).

Comment 6

[Dan Pernokis]

BTW, running TB 78.6.1 (standard public release) on Windows 7 Pro (32-bit).

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Dan, does this still reproduce for you with windows 7?

Comment 8

[Dan Pernokis]

Everything runs as per my Comment #5 above. I permanently left the icon notification in the visible part of the System Tray after testing back then, and I'm happy with how it works. FYI, now running TB V91.13.1 (32-bit) on the same Windows 7 machine (Dell Precision T3500).

I can also say it works fine (ie, the same) on TB v115.18.0 (64-bit) under the latest Windows 10 on a recent Lenovo Thinkpad T470 Laptop. (And it had been running without issues on our Dell Latitude E6400 laptop until the machine was scrapped.)

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Thanks Dan!