jo said:
The purist in me also wants to see intelliigent handling of those apps
which are designed to minimise to the tray anyway. Power-Grab, for
example. Minimising it to tray with TWI or MME gives two tray icons.
Yes, that's a major problem area: the group of program having their own
min-to-tray function. To me, it's a big pain when programs have this.
The ideal design would be that things were taken of at the OS level.
Such that a direct click on the minimize button of a window always meant
"minimize to taskbar" and the "right click on the minimize button always
meant "minimize to tray."
(I mean at least for standard programs. Those whose character is to be
tray apps anyway, where most of their commands are performed from their
tray icon menu, that's a separate situation.)
Ok, one should minimise it conventionally, but....
Yes, but it is tricky to try to keep one's reflexes tracking which click
is the applicable one for which kind of minimize for which app.
You know, the group of programs having their own min-to-tray function,
I've noticed some of them generate -- all on their own -- problems of
the double icons. Two examples: Treepad, and FreshDownload. On both
of these, I have their minimize to tray option turned off. Yet they are
constantly shoving their icon into my system tray. Together with another
icon in my taskbar. All for just one instance.
It's very confusing behavior, and make it hard for me to have a sense
of what I've got open. It's extra confusing in a case like Treepad,
the type of program where it's normal to run multiple instances...
These two programs come to my mind first as examples, since I use them
daily. They are not at all the only programs with this buggy behavior.
Something going wrong with how the programmer wrote in their minimize
to tray option.
When I see an app listed as having a "minimize to tray" option in its
features list, my first reaction is to flinch. Due to the problems that
often accompany. (1) If the minimize to tray behavior is not optional,
it means the direct click on the minimize command is inconsistent with
the rest of my program windows. (2) It will be incompatible with my normal
min-to-tray command that is provided by my trayer utility. (3) It might
well be buggy, producing the double icon problem on its own.
Are you adapting? Or going in with a resource hacker?
I'd taken a quick look for that. I unpacked it, then opened it in Resource
Hacker. Unfortunately, there was nothing obvious there. I didn't spot
the buttons as easily replaceable resources. Instead, there were some
lines of embedded hex, for some pictures, which is probably where they
were drawn. Trying to modify that hex there, it's not within my experience.
The drawback for me is the fact that it doesn't work properly on a
maximised window. Since I'm having a closer look at it atm, I'm going
with the workround of stretching the window sideways and then upwards
but I'd much rather not have to.
Thanks for the heads up. I'd not tested it on many windows, in many states.
As is needed to really assess this type of program...
It doesn't feel like it uses much at all. I'm going to keep running it
for a while and see how it shapes up.
It probably does not do much of a discernible hit after initial launch.
What's valuable is to commit to the test of keeping it running for a while,
in order to gain confidence that it does not exhibit any leaky behavior.
Since you're volunteered to run the testing, I'll appreciate hearing how
you feel it shapes up.
IIRC Actual Title Buttons has recently gone freeware, and is a joke
compared to MME
I don't think I've used Actual Title Buttons, doesn't sound familiar. But
then from your comment, guess I'm not missing anything...
TWI doesn't miss very often. And of course, it can tray by hot key which
is nice. And it does millions of other stuff.
That's a good point; its min-to-tray op is only one of a great number of
available functions.
But I am slowly moving away from it *sob* since switching to RunFast as an
app launcher. The main problem with TWI is that it overwrites app specific
hot keys. This can be a real nuisance at times. It is odd how many hot keys
you can keep in your mind and know nothing about until in the relevant app
window... when you find you've assigned the combination to some obscure
task in TWI :-(
I have trouble remembering hot keys, so would not get into the difficulty
of managing large numbers. But I see the problem there. Then, to even try
to stop and use one of those utils that gives you an interface for your
assigned system hotkeys, it would not help. As it's not going to go over
and read TWI's private HKCU key, nor those of any other app. It's also
totally out of the question to try for a direct-read of those keys oneself:
[HKCU\Software\Wonderful Icon\Version 1.5\Hotkeys]
"HKey0001"=hex:00,00,64,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,01,00,00,00
It might not even be possible for TWI to be programmed to avoid overwrites.
Since I assume that for other apps that offer specific hotkeys within the
interface, they also, like TWI, store those settings in their private config
locales, and in their own way.
I haven't noticed there being any standard or tradition for apps to write
to some central part of the registry to record their individual (set within
the program) hotkey assignments. Absence of that, I suppose some anarchy
amongst apps is inevitable.
(Note - all the above is casual guesswork; I've not researched the subject.)
But it's still a superb app - I doubt it will ever be out of my sys
tray. AFAIK, all it does is load a reg file on launch - I doubt it uses
any resources just sitting in the tray.
I doubt it does too. On reg use - yes, there is its HKCU key. There was
also one isolated other key, in HKCR, for WONDPPET.DLL. I did not keep that
key, as it did not serve any purpose, isolated and near-empty as it was.
Or at least, I'd not yet learned of any intended purpose. The DLL seemed
to still get called into play fine, I believe, w/o that key. Btw, I do
like the intriguing description given for that DLL:
"Wonderful Icon Puppeteer (does some of the dirty work for TWI)"
ffice computer, crowded taskbar, parking meter....)Any