Launchers

[aeosynth]

Binary package hint: alltray

AllTray should be capable of placing launchers in the notification area, which then turn into the normal AllTray icons when launched, like an actual dock.

[Michael B. Trausch (mtrausch)]

Some clarification on this would be helpful.

It sounds more or less like you are asking for session manager support in AllTray, with the ability to configure it to not start applications right away at desktop login, but the ability to start them up "on demand" sometime after logging into the desktop environment. I'd be against implementing this request that way because of the potential for confusion, but I would be entirely for doing something like making it easier to create .desktop files that can be put on a desktop environment's panel or on a user's desktop in the DE. Does that make sense and align with your thoughts behind the request?

[aeosynth (aeosynth)]

Creating regular launchers right now is pretty trivial, I can just go into the gnome main menu, right click on an icon and select 'Add this launcher to panel/desktop'; I'm not sure how making this even easier pertains to my request. My idea is that AllTray should grab those panel launchers and put them in the notification area, with the panel doing the session management for you. To avoid confusion, docks put a dot or an arrow next to icons that are launched to distinguish them from those that aren't; since panels tend to be smaller than docks, though, launchers could be grayed out to distinguish them from launched programs.

[Michael B. Trausch (mtrausch)]

I meant creating launchers that would automatically prepend the alltray invocation to an existing program, or create a launcher that would launch a program under alltray with a simple UI addition. There are plans for session-manager support in AllTray such that when you logout and later log back in, your program state will be saved and resumed (for applications that support session management, anyway). The idea is that it would work just like existing session management for applications that are run without alltray, being very transparent. I think that's probably the best route, since it starts things up when the desktop environment is logged into.

I'll keep this open for consideration when I get to the point of adding features to AllTray, but that's going to be more than a little way into the future yet.

[aeosynth (aeosynth)]

I agree that creating alltray-ified launchers should be easy, but what I'm requesting is that those launchers be placed straight-away to the notification area, and be reused by the launched program. Look at Avant Window Navigator (AWN) to see how this works or if it's confusing.

Look at http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/237/ - there's a desire for an integrated panel/dock. AllTray could make that happen. It may take a while, but hey, that's what a wishlist is for :).

[Michael B. Trausch (mtrausch)]

The more I think about this one, the more I think that keeping persistent things in the task tray which do not represent launchers is inappropriate. By the very nature of this application, we already pretty explicitly as part of the program's purpose disregard the GNOME HIG and other documentation which regards the system tray as an area to be as clean and clear as possible. I agree with the idea that it should be kept that way, and while AllTray doesn't do that when running applications, the system tray only gets as full as the user of AllTray wants it to be.

Going in the other direction, there is an open bug request to trim AllTray down to one single icon that houses a list of applications that AllTray is currently managing. I'd have to agree with that one over this one, and I think that the idea of making launcher creation easier is a good one. It's likely to be something that will be in a future release, probably soon, because of its utility, but it won't be in the form of this bug report.

Regardless, thank you for taking your time to report this issue and help to improve AllTray. If you have any more feature requests, or bugs to report, in the future, please do not hesitate to come back and report them!