Hello all,

I guess this is a message for real tweakers/hackers.

Ok, so, I recently asked about minimizing Outlook Express to the system tray. My only alternative was to download this great small little app. called TrayIt. It's great, it does exactly what I want, it gives me the option of minimizing ANY window to the system tray.

I have no complaints about the program, however, it's now yet another program running (no matter how small). I'm thinking that if this tiny program, among others I've found, can do this job of just adding the context menu and command to the action of right clicking on the minimize button, then there must be a key we can add to the registry to do this without having a program constantly running to do this.

We can already add some context menus, and modify current context menus. So I'm thinking someone could figure this one out.

I don't want this to come off as some goofy "challenge". But, can someone come up with what sounds to be an easy fix for this, by comparison to other tweaks?

Welcome back to this 'New' Forum!

I have to completely agree with the logic of your question.

A little history for you: even though I have parked on this site since Feb 2002 and seen that very question asked at least four or five times (not to mention lurking on other tech sites for a time -- I'm completely dedicated to this one now!), Outlook Express appears not to have a registry tweak that will allow it to be minimized to the system tray (without the third party add-on like 'Tray-It').

I, too, could use that tweak if it were to be created, found, or otherwise discovered!

I guess we'll have to wait and see!.

Welcome back to this 'New' Forum!

[/QUOTE]

Thank you. I've been a lurker here for at least a year now, I think. Anyway, I finally joined at the end of last month or the beginning of this month, then everything goes away.

[QUOTE=canadadude]

I have to completely agree with the logic of your question.

[/QUOTE]

Makes sense to me. Although I'm about as far from any kind of registry hacker as you can get.

[QUOTE=canadadude]

... Outlook Express appears not to have a registry tweak that will allow it to be minimized to the system tray (without the third party add-on like 'Tray-It').

I, too, could use that tweak if it were to be created, found, or otherwise discovered!...

[/QUOTE]

Xactly. I've been digging around Google, and I found this tiny little app, it's not even 20k. It's called RBTray. It installs with an .inf file. Kinda like TweakUI. Yet it still has an exe attatched to it. It's definately closer though. I'm still using TrayIt for now.

I mean, there's gotta be somewhere to just attach a line saying "minimize to tray". If we can tell the OS to make all title bars blue, or orange, or whatever......? Hmm? I'm sure if someone that's into tackling these kinds of things sees this post, they'll hopefully enjoy cracking this one.

Hmm? I've seen tweaks to add new sub-menus to existing context menus. And I HAVE a tweak to go in and remove things from context menus, like when an app. adds itself to it (ie "Open with WinRAR").

So, the minimize button attaches itself to any dialog window. If the properties of the minimize button can be found and manipulated, then a command line could be added (in my not-so-experienced opinion) to it. If TrayIt can manipulate it, then it's doing what is needed.Now we just need to find a way to make it sticky, without the use of a running app..

Question:

Where is the tooltip located that appears when you hover your mouse over the minimize button? That seems to be directly related to the minimize button, on ANY window. Just a thought.

right, that is different though.  Those registry entries that control the context menus are defined as a specific format, like when you right click it looks to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers and that points to keys that contain the program execution info. 

The tooltips you see are coded into explorer.exe (and others) as part of the graphic interface.

My guess is that TrayIT acts as a mini-shell to dock items in the system tray, don't really know though.