Comment 20 for bug 391056

I like Cyberkilla's idea, but I think one has to consider two things:
a) The size of the icons. Tray apps icons tend to make sense only when small. This seems to me due to
b) The tray is a notification area (as Andrea Cimitan pointed). There must be some way of highlighting apps which need it. Apps should appear in the tray, on demand, not necessarily always. For example, right now, I have a volume tray app, a clipboard manager, and a mail agent in the tray. Of those, the volume and clipboard ones I'm not using very often, and there's no need of them showing all the time. Neither does the mail icon have to be there all the time: it's useful only when I have a new mail.
Maybe, in some scenario like Cyberkilla's, highlighted apps could appear alongside the main tray button, or maybe the button could appear highlighted and the behaviour could change to "Activate notifying app when pressed" instead of "Show tray icons when pressed" (against, I know, the principle of least surprise).
Just my two cents.