The system tray that never was

In a a recent post, The Old New Thing made reference to terminology errors, citing the system tray as an example.

To quote:

"One of the most common errors is to refer to the Taskbar Notification Area as the "tray" or the "system tray". This has never been correct."

We recently had several vigorous discussions in our groups about various terms that our product would use. What-will-we-call-this-thing is a fun and interesting exercise, but it's not a science. Bottom line is trying to find a term that will work for the users.

If the users fix on terms that aren't "official", like "system tray", it could be that the official term isn't a good one...maybe we should get crazywild and change "Taskbar Notification Area" to "system tray". Nobody would notice because they always called it that.

Vista is trying to compromise by using the official term but gently acknowledging that it isn't popular: "The notification area is on the taskbar and is sometimes referred to as the system tray."

Comments

• Anonymous
  July 19, 2006
  A word becomes a "word" because a large enough group of people use and understand its usage -- a word does NOT become a "word" simply because its in the dictionary.
  
  Pah-lease avoid confusion and call it the "System Tray"