MinimizeToTray revived (MinTrayR) Beta

About

MinTrayR Beta is a replacement for the popular MinimizeToTray extension which is no longer actively developed. MinimizeToTray is claimed by the author not compatible with recent Firefox and other Mozilla applications. MinTrayR Beta tries to fill this gap by especially targetting these applications.

MinTrayR Beta lets the user minimize Mozilla powered applications such as Firefox, Thunderbird or Songbird to the system tray.

It's goal is to be more robust while using less resources and providing a better API (DOM Events for example instead of a callback)

Right now MinTrayR Beta is still in the early development stage and not yet fully tested or fully featured. However it seems to work OK.

MinTrayR Beta was recently reviewed by Mook, the original author of MinimizeToTray.

Download

mintrayr.xpi
Version 1.0b3 - 2011/07/20

Mozilla Addons page

Compatibility

MinTrayR Beta is currently compatible with:

• Firefox
  5.0 - 7.*
• Thunderbird
  5.0 - 6.0
• Seamonkey
  2.1 - 2.2.*

on the following platforms:

• Windows
  2000, XP, Vista, 7
  32bit, 64bit
• Linux / Gnome^[1]
  Built and tested on Ubuntu 11.04
  x86, x86_64 (amd64)

MinTrayR Beta tries to do application specific integration. However there is still much room for improvement.

Support for other platforms is planned but not yet there.

License

MinTrayR Beta is tri-licensed under MPL 1.1/GPL 2.0 or later/LGPL 2.1 or later.

Contributions

If you like MinTrayR Beta consider to give something back. As of the moment you may use PayPal via addons.mozilla.org or Flattr.

Paypal

All contributions will be highly appreciated!.

Known issues

• The js-ctypes implementation is brand new, has some rough edges. There is a possiblity for an increased number of crashes
• Third-party software using MinTrayR will likely fail to work
• In Gnome, the menu won't hide when losing focus
• In Gnome, there might be problems with some themes where the icon menu doesn't behave as expected
• Ubuntu Unity is not officially supported and lacks libappindicator support
• ^[1] KDE should work, too - in many configurations, but not everywhere, and only if you use a gtk build, not a qt build. Ubuntu Unity is NOT supported right now, as it uses the incompatible libappindicator.

Sources

Source code is included in the XPI.

Additionally there is a public repository over at github: https://github.com/nmaier/mintrayr/tree/js-ctypes/.

Bug reports, suggestions, feature requests

Please use the issue tracking system at github:
https://github.com/nmaier/mintrayr/issues

Don't forget to give details about the application and it's version (e.g. Firefox 3.6) and your operating system

TODO

Things I would like to address, in no particular order.

• Get the js-ctypes implementation ready for prime-time
• Integrate with Sunbird/Lightning
• Integrate with Chatzilla (extension/standalone)
• Integrate with Postbox
• Integrate with Spicebird
• Consider to bring back Songbird support
• Declare to be a toolkit extension, allowing to install into unknown applications as well. This will not only enable other extensions to use the core functionality, but also might allow to enable MinTrayR Beta for arbritary windows?
• Integrate more where it makes sense (e.g. more/better context menu entries)

Thanks

Special Thanks goes to Mook for reviewing my code and, of course, to all the folks that helped me testing and/or made valuable suggestions.

Also special thanks to Micheal Buckley, who is a nice competitor, for discussing various issues and providing valuable feedback and insights.