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Enhancement request - Improve Tray Icon Options

Posted: Jun 25th, 2008, 5:54 pm
by oomingmak
Hi Igor.

I have only recently discovered your excellent program and I'm seriously considering buying it, so I am very pleased to hear that Windows 2000 support is to be continued (because it's the only Windows OS that I use). :)

However, there is one thing that is putting me off, and that's the limited options for hiding the tray icon. I noticed that in the screenshot for the current release version (v3.3) there is no option to always hide the tray icon (regardless of the number of devices attached). I like to keep my tray icons to an absolute minimum and I prefer to use a hotkey (or Start Menu *.lnk shortcut) to make the utility visible when I need it. This option is often available for programs that run in the system tray.

I am currently using the built-in Windows 2000 Unplug / Eject Hardware utility in this way. I created a shortcut to: %SystemRoot%\System32\RUNDLL32.EXE shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll and then I assigned a keyboard hotkey to this shortcut so that I can launch it whenever needed, without having to show a tray icon. I think that this feature would be really great addition if it could be included in the v4 beta.

It could work by adding a couple of extra checkbox choices to the 'Look and Feel' section of Options dialog:


[x] Always hide icon:
......[ ] Show System Tray Icon when hotkey or shortcut is run
......[x] Show Application Window when hotkey or shortcut is run


(You can probably think of a better way to name these options.)

If the first option is selected, it would show the tray icon when the SafelyRemove program was run again from the Start menu (or if the user hotkey is entered). If the second option is selected, then a SafelyRemove window is displayed (with the attached devices listed) when the program is run from the Start menu (or if use hotkey is entered)

Selecting only the second option will mean that a tray icon is never shown (not even when the Safely Remove program window is open and the user is interacting with it). Selecting both options will mean that the window will open, but there will also be a tray icon visible as well (so the user can close the window and still have the icon in the tray). If the user then decides to closes the tray icon as well, then they can just re-run the Safely Remove program to show both window and tray icon again (as defined by the user's settings in the Look and Feel section).

I hope the above explanation is clear enough to make sense, and I'd be very grateful if you would consider adding this to your beta. Thanks!

Posted: Jun 26th, 2008, 4:24 pm
by Igor
Hi oomingmak,
Thank you for so detailed feature request!

We will consider adding this feature in one of the following versions, depend on amount of requests of another users for this feature. Therefore I've separated it into into the topic.

Posted: Jun 26th, 2008, 4:26 pm
by Igor
Also you can try another tool that allows you to hide any icons from the system tray:
http://www.pssoftlab.com/pstf_info.phtml

Posted: Jul 9th, 2008, 10:31 pm
by oomingmak
Hi Igor, thank you very much for kindly agreeing to giving consideration to my idea.

I know my suggestion is not as important as non-GUI issues, but I have to say that one of the things that attracted me the most to your program is that you took the time to make it look so nice (which makes it feel professional and pleasant to work with). I suspect that many other people also make judgements on first impressions too.

I would add one point to my suggestion above. It would be good if the user had the option to show the tray icon for a short time when a device is detected, even if they have chosen to hide it at all other times.

When a new device is detected, the icon and tooltip balloon would be shown for about 5 seconds, and then revert to whatever setting the user has chosen. So, if the user has chosen to hide the tray icon, then after 5 seconds the tray icon and tooltip message about newly detected device will disappear completely.

I notice that Windows 2000 support seems to be back with version 4 beta 5, so I will now try this new version.

Thanks.