Is there a third-party alternative to the system tray notification area?

hdmi said:

I disagree. The minimum taskbar height that is possible to be achieved is still too tall. After I change the icons size to the smallest option available, they are still too big. After I change the spacing between icons to the narrowest option available, the spacing is still too wide.

Just to give you a quick example of what I mean, here is a pic I edited in another thread almost 2 weeks ago. The taskbar on the top is from SAB. On the bottom is the Win10 taskbar from ExplorerPatcher.

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This is because they say, mouse is outdated, everyone should use touchscreens.

NormanF said:

A shame we can't revert back to the Windows 10 taskbar. The latest Explorer Patcher, following Microsoft removed customisation for it.

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On a good side, reports say, replacing explorer.exe with one from an earlier build is a workaround.

Anixx said:

This is because they say, mouse is outdated, everyone should use touchscreens.

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Wasn't that a good part of what Win8 wanted folks to have? I have 2 older Notebooks with touchscreen but seldom need that function, same for a 21.5" Desktop monitor [that requires a USB connection]. Don't often use the 2-finger touchpad function either.

hdmi said:

The taskbar on the top is from SAB. On the bottom is the Win10 taskbar from ExplorerPatcher.

Click to expand...

This is my SAB Taskbar in Small Mode...

ShamrockRig said:

Both are to me lol

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I don't normally have THAT many open apps, though, as this pic was only intended to be able to show how oversized the taskbar from SAB factually is. On average I only have about a dozen open apps or maybe less, but sometimes this number can go up quite a bit. Had there been only just a handful of icons, they would still have been too much of a distraction to me with SAB, merely due to their size. With SAB the taskbar just domitates the whole screen no matter what it is that is visible above the taskbar, and, setting the taskbar to auto hide is not a solution to this problem for me, as my workflow constantly requires me to use a competence known as bird's-eye view. If you, like me, are a trained software developer in the corporate IT world, then you'll know that this one in particular is on the list of 5 main competences you need to have for this line of work. The fact that the Win11 taskbar was designed by someone who does not fit in the description of such an IT role is plenty obvious IMO.

Edwin said:

Toolbars and my Drag N Drop Outbox, just to name a couple...

View attachment 100282 View attachment 100283

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I just created a shortcut to launch draft email and attach selected item to draft to the file and folder context menus so I can just click send on the draft email that opens

dacrone said:

I just created a shortcut to launch draft email and attach selected item to draft to the file and folder context menus so I can just click send on the draft email that opens

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I simply drag items onto the Taskbar shortcut and they silently/automatically go to pre-defined recipients.
Mostly images sent to my design team, very fast and painless.
(It's a shortcut of a strange script that requires Outlook to run in the background but it works!)

Edwin said:

This is my SAB Taskbar in Small Mode...

View attachment 100334

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AFAIK it still turns out much bigger than that if you happen to have Windows Settings | System | Display | Scale set to 150% on a 4k screen. The same also applies to Windhawk, also AFAIK.

hdmi said:

AFAIK it still turns out much bigger than that if you happen to have Windows Settings | System | Display | Scale set to 150% on a 4k screen. The same also applies Windhawk, also AFAIK.

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You're probably right. I no longer have a 4K.

Edwin said:

You're probably right. I no longer have a 4K.

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From what I can see, SAB's ability to reduce the taskbar height and ability to reduce both the size of and the spacing between the icons on the taskbar are an exact match to what already was possible to achieve with Windhawk a very long time before the author of SAB basically decided to steal the code from Windhawk, and, the latter is both free and open source, yet, this Russian guy who wrote SAB still charges money for SAB.

hdmi said:

this Russian guy who wrote SAB still charges money for SAB.

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He's gotta eat too!

Isn't steal the code and open source a contradiction in terms???

Edwin said:

He's gotta eat too!

Isn't steal the code and open source a contradiction in terms???

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No, it isn't. For example, under the GNU GPL v3 license it is permitted to charge a fee for a copy of someone else's work to cover the cost of distribution, your lunch, and more, but not if you don't include both its source code [so your recipients have the same freedom as you] and a copy of its original GPL v3 license with the original copyright notice still intact if it was included in the licence [so that your recipients know their rights].