Firetray

Overview

Js-ctypes rewrite of the binary XPCOM version of Firetray.

Features

• for all applications:

  • show/hide a single or all windows
  • restore windows to their previous state, position, size
  • restore each window to its original virtual desktop/workspace
  • activate restored windows
  • hide to tray on close
  • hide to tray on minimize
  • start minimized to tray
  • show icon only when hidden to tray
  • mouse scroll on tray icon shows/hides
  • GTK-themable icons
  • customizable tray icons
  • popup menu (show/hide individual windows, open new windows, quit)
  • command-line -firetrayShowHide option (useful for window manager's keyboard shortcuts)
  • command-line -firetrayPresent option (activates windows)
  • middle click on the tray icon activates last registered window

• for mail applications:

  • display unread message count in tray icon
  • display biff in tray icon for new messages
  • include/exclude mail accounts to/from messages count
  • include/exclude folders types to/from messages count
  • count in sub-folders recursively
  • handle Exquilla accounts
  • restrict message count to favorite folders
  • trigger external program on message count change

• for applications embedding chat (currently only Thunderbird)

  • display additional system tray status icon

Notes

• requires GTK+ 2.20 and higher.
• Firetray temporarily unsets:
  • the tabs.warnOnClose built-in preference, which otherwise disrupts the handeling of the close event
  • mail.biff.show_tray_icon for mail applications
• Experimental non-customizable keyboard shortcut for hiding all windows set to: accel-shift-w

References

• if you're looking for other mozilla-desktop integration:

  • Paul Neulinger's Gnome-shell-Thunderbird integration
  • Mike Conley's Unity-Thunderbird integration
  • discontinued Mozilla New Mail Icon (Biff)

• Alltray launches any applications into tray

KNOWN BUGS

• windows aren't restored with the same z-order, but there is no means to correct that under Linux

• notifications for excluded mail account servers are not disabled. Newmailalerts are hard-coded and we can't easily disable them on a per-server basis (only globally, see mail.biff.show_alert). The proper way would probably be to disable default notifications globally, and handle notifications ourselves. This is out of the scope of this addon, but you may want to give a try to the MailAlert extension

• child windows (compose message, preferences, ...) are not handled by Firetray. For ex., they are not hidden along with there top-level window.

• because of getNumNewMessages()'s strange behaviour, it's impossible to display an accurate count of new messages. The best we can do is display a biff icon.

• POP users should set [http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_:FAQs:_Automatically_Download_Messages](Automatically download new messages) to see new message. See this discussion.

• some features do not work well under Unity/Compiz.

Acknowledgment

• Some code borrowed from Mike Conley.
• Some code borrowed from Nils Maier.
• kind support from Neil Deaking, Bobby Holley
• default icons borrowed from Mozilla, Pidgin, Tango Desktop Project