Thread: Icon Clutter, Begone

Windows' Notification Area, also known as the system tray, has traditionally packed more aggravation per square inch than any other area of Windows, since it tends to bulge at the seams with icons for applications that you don't remember installing, and that often pester you with balloons alerting you to things you don't care about. In Windows 7, Microsoft finally supplies tools you can use to tame the mess.
For each app, you can choose to display or hide its icon and notifications. The overflow area for icons that don't fit in the Notification Area now pops up, rather than shoving applications into the taskbar on the left. You can drag and drop icons between the overflow and notification sections.

Clicking on a little empty rectangle at the far right of the new taskbar minimizes all open windows so you can see the desktop. This feature existed as an icon in Vista's Quick Launch tool bar, but you might use it more often if you're a fan of the Windows Gadgets introduced in Vista: The Sidebar that formerly housed them (also new in Vista) is gone, and you can simply place them anywhere on the desktop you please.



(Microsoft says users complained that the Sidebar ate up too much screen real estate, especially on smaller laptops.) The company has also introduced a couple of easy-to-use window management features. If you want to work in a pair of windows side by side, dragging the second window to either side of the screen snaps them both into place so that each takes up half the screen. If you drag a window to the top of the display, it snaps to the top, and maximizes to full screen.