Controlling the Desktop Appearance in Windows Vista

(Page 1 of 4 )

In this fourth part of a six-part series on personalizing Windows Vista, we pick up where we left off last week with the system tray, and then discuss controlling desktop themes. This article is excerpted from chapter four of the book Windows Vista Administration: The Definitive Guide, written by Brian Culp (O'Reilly; ISBN: 0596529597). Copyright © 2006 O'Reilly Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission from the publisher. Available from booksellers or direct from O'Reilly Media.

 Customizing System Tray Icon Behavior

You can be even more specific about System Tray conduct by configuring actions on just the icons of your choosing. If you’re following along from the preceding section, just click the Customize button from the Notification Area tab of the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box.

Otherwise, right-click an empty area of the System Tray and choose the Customize Notification Icons menu item. Either way, you’ll see the dialog box shown in Figure 4-17.

Figure 4-17.  Customizing individual System Tray icon behavior

To configure icon behavior, just select one of the items in the list. The Behavior column then becomes a drop-down list where the options are as follows:

1. Hide
   
2. Show
   
3. Hide when inactive

Current items are the ones loaded at the time you open this dialog box. Past items were at one time loaded in the System Tray, and may yet be loaded again. For example, if you don’t want to see the Windows Task Manager icon in the System Tray the next time you use this utility, choose it from your Past Items list, and then choose the Hide option.

Again, it’s worth pointing out that just because you don’t see an icon in the System Tray doesn’t mean the application hasn’t loaded. Hiding an icon has no bearing on the item’s startup behavior (other than whether the icon shows up in the System Tray).

There’s even a registry edit that will hide all icons permanently if you’d like to handle all of the System Tray icons with a bigger stick.

Hiding All System Tray Icons

A relatively simple little registry edit can hide all System Tray icons, leaving the area displaying only the system time and date (and of course, you can disable these as well, as we’ve just seen).

Here’s what to do:

1. Open the Registry Editor by typing regedit at the Vista Start menu.

2. Navigate to this key:
   
     HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\ Windows\CurrentVersion\ 
     Explorer
   
   and add a new DWORD value calledNoTrayItemsDisplay.
   
3. Double-click the new DWORD value and assign it a value of 1 (true).
   
4. Exit the Registry Editor and reboot your computer. Now, the System Tray should look like what you see in Figure 4-18.

To reenable the display of System Tray icons, you can either delete theNoTrayItemsDisplayDWORD value or set its value to 0.

Next: Turning Off the System Tray Notifications >>
 

More BrainDump Articles
More By O'Reilly Media

Comments On: Controlling the Desktop Appearance in Windows Vista

· This article is an excerpt from the book "Windows Vista Administration: The...   >>> Post your comment now!

Buy this book...

This article is excerpted from chapter four of the book Windows Vista Administration: The Definitive Guide, written by Brian Culp (O'Reilly; ISBN: 0596529597). Check it out today at your favorite bookstore. Buy this book now.