Feature request: Automatically hide icon in KDE

[protist]

In KDE's tray, users have the ability to set icons' visibility to Hidden, Always visible or Auto. In the last case, the icons only show when necessary. For example, the battery icon is hidden when 100%, and shown when < 100%; the usb and printer icons are hidden unless something is connected or printing respectively.

It'd be great if there were an option to make FireTray do something similar, only showing when there are unread messages. I think this can be attained by using KDE's StatusNotifierItem interface, although I'm not sure if there are alternative ways.

[foudfou]

FireTray has a similar option: Show tray icon only if a window is hidden. But it doesn't work for new messages.

You're completely right! The StatusNotifierItem/AppIndicator should be state=PASSIVE when idle, state=ACTIVE otherwise.

Do you know if Unity also has this feature (Hidden, Always visible or Auto) ?

[protist]

I never hide Thunderbird, so I have the the FireTray option set to always show the icon. Hence, this setting isn't the most useful for me.

Sounds promising, and simpler than I imagined! I'm not sure about Unity; I haven't used Unity for a few years now.

[foudfou]

Can you try 59320d5 ? xpi here

[protist]

Yes! That works well for me, although I ran into the "wrong unread message count" issue while testing. (I assume that's just Thunderbird's fault though.) Thanks for the implementation!

However, I noticed that when the icon hides, it is no longer available in the notification popup menu. For example, see this screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/jKMEyQw.png

Here, you can see (e.g.) "Manage Print Jobs" is hidden when not in use, but still accessible via the popup. Instead, FireTray appears to make the icon totally disappear. I'm not sure if this is the expected behaviour, and is certainly no big deal (I never use the contextual menu anyway).

[foudfou]

Oops, we need the icon when windows are hidden. I'll fix that.

[Zranz]

In Unity it doesn't work as I think you intended... I do not have unread emails, but I still see the icon when Thunderbird is minimized with the option "Show tray icon only if a windows is hidden" off, and "Hide icon when no mail" is on.

But as Rabotyahoff commented in #150, another icon in Unity is an excess, as Thunderbird is already integrated in the notifications tab. The useful features for us are the autoclose option on startup and on close, as icon is already provided with Thunderbird (as well as notifications, and change of color of the icon with unread email)

[foudfou]

@protist @Zranz, I made both prefs exclusive, as I think they interfere with each other. Is that better for you (see f89009d) ?

[protist]

@foudfou For me, using KDE, the prefs were never an issue, since I would always have the window visible, and always want the icon "displayed" (letting KDE's panel do the hiding). I presume that this commit doesn't change that. I haven't installed it, but I'm happy to if you like, if there's an xpi?

[Zranz]

@foudfou I agree prefs being mutually exclusive is probably correct.
My intended use would still be to have a third option which is to completely disable the icon, regardless of window being active, or unread email.

[foudfou]

@Zranz could you open another issue for this ? I think there are already requests for this or something similar. If so, could you cite this current issue overthere ?