Did You Know? Windows Has Never Had a "System Tray" (2021)

Did You Know? Windows Has Never Had a "System Tray" (2021)(howtogeek.com)

7 points by mkotowski 1 year ago | 4 comments

HowtoGeek (2021)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taskbar#Taskbar_elements

  Raymond Chen suggests the confusion originated with systray.exe, a small application that controlled some icons within the notification area in Windows 95.[10] The notification area is also referred to as the "status area" by Microsoft.[24][25][26] In the current edition of Microsoft Writing Style Guide, Microsoft has clarified that beginning with Windows 11, "system tray" is now the preferred term,[1] while "notification area" is the term used in Windows 10 and Windows 8.[2]

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/style-guide/a-z-word-list-... (2023)

It's a good idea to have a working vocabulary of GUI elements and widgets. Because they're 100% visual these days, without text labels in any language, and there are still scenarios of verbal tech support.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_graphical_user_interfa...

fuzzfactor 1 year ago |

In Windows 11 you won't have a system tray either, if any of its essential Services are disabled or encumbered:

Capability Access Manager Service

Network List Service

Network Store Interface Service

Even if you enable ShowSystrayDateTimeValueName and SystemTrayChevronVisibility in the registry, you also need those 3 "unrelated" services running which more or less substitute for systray.exe.

Of course you need Network Store Interface anyway, regardless if you are not networking or using any "Store Apps", or your display may be so faulty the PC might not even fully boot.

Progress in this direction never stops :\

mixdup 1 year ago | |

>Even if you enable ShowSystrayDateTimeValueName and SystemTrayChevronVisibility in the registry

Surely you have those registry keys incorrect, it's not called the systray!

mixdup 1 year ago |

I mean they called it systray.exe, it had no other name in the Windows 95/98 interface, so what else should we have called it?

It's like at my current company, we have a legacy product called Volcano, but we don't sell it anymore. However components of it still exist in our current products/platform, so when the Volcano service fails or needs to be reconfigured, the management types get upset that we still call it Volcano. The only problem is that specific component, while not customer facing, still exists and they never renamed it. Don't bitch at me because I have to literally communicate to the support team to fiddle the Volcano button

Moral of the story is, if they didn't want it to be called the system tray they shouldn't have named it system tray dot executable, and should've been more intentional in documentation and elsewhere at publicizing a different name

Raymond Chen suggests the confusion originated with systray.exe, a small application that controlled some icons within the notification area in Windows 95.[10] The notification area is also referred to as the "status area" by Microsoft.[24][25][26] In the current edition of Microsoft Writing Style Guide, Microsoft has clarified that beginning with Windows 11, "system tray" is now the preferred term,[1] while "notification area" is the term used in Windows 10 and Windows 8.[2]