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In the Forums... |
Posted: September 19, 2001 Written by: Sine Tray Icon Hiding This is something that I didn’t know XP even did until it suddenly started doing it – Windows will hide inactive system tray icons! This is very cool for those pesky programs that insist on adding system tray icons that you can’t get rid of. Windows will only start doing this after it knows an icon is inactive, though, and sometimes it guesses wrong. I would suggest using Windows normally for about a week, and then you should start modifying its settings. Right-click on the task bar, click Properties, and click “Customize…” at the bottom and then start tweaking. Sometimes you just don’t want to hide an icon, such as your soundcard’s volume control, so I’d suggest setting those kinds of things to “Always Show.” Other tray icons are almost never useful, such as antivirus programs and other utilities, so you can set those to “Always Hide”.  The arrow indicates hidden icons When an icon is “hidden”, it doesn’t disappear completely. Instead, you’ll have a small arrow at the left edge of your system tray, which will restore all of your tray icons. Clicking it again will hide the hidden icons again, giving you a smaller tray. Some Real Tweaking For more system-level tweaks, you will have to use a third-party utility. This has been true for other versions of Windows, so it's no surprise - Microsoft doesn't include hard-core tweaks in the Control Panel, unfortunately. One that I've tried is Tweak-XP, available here from Electic. It lets you adjust your cache settings, tweak your Internet connection, and play with some of the visual settings I've mentioned (and it even lets you make your task bar translucent!). I'm sure there will be a ton of Windows XP tweaking programs once XP gains popularity, but this one is already pretty good. In Conclusion I hope this guide helps new and old users of Windows alike to use Windows XP’s various features better. XP is definitely the most feature-filled and advanced OS from Microsoft to date, and some people may feel lost. Microsoft has a very wide list of how-to articles which you can access at: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/using/howto/default.asp. Good luck, and thanks for reading! Click here for a printer friendly version of this guide! |
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