For example, there's a blog post that explains why Windows stores the system time in local time instead of Coordinated Unversal Time (UTC), like other operating systems.Ĭhris Hoffman is the former Editor-in-Chief of How-To Geek. His blog, The Old New Thing, is packed full of interesting facts like this that you just can't find elsewhere outside Microsoft. If you're interested in this, we encourage you to read Raymond Chen's entire blog post. How-To Geek is full of articles calling this feature the "system tray" because that's what people call it-even many people at Microsoft! But we also try to call it the "notification area." If even Microsoft's employees can't even get the official name right in official documentation, it's no wonder that everyone else is confused.ĭo we think it matters? Not really. At least Microsoft itself communicated clearly, right? Well, about that.Įven worse, other groups (not the shell) picked up on this misnomer and started referring it to the tray in their own documentation and samples, some of which even erroneously claim that "system tray" is the official name of the notification area. As Raymond tells it, Microsoft wiped all mentions of the "tray" everywhere from the shell documentation. Microsoft discarded this idea and replaced it with the Windows 95 taskbar. (Some might argue that this was taking the desktop metaphor a bit too far.) In early builds of Windows 95, the taskbar originally wasn't a taskbar it was a folder window docked at the bottom of the screen that you could drag/drop things into/out of, sort of like the organizer tray in the top drawer of you desk. Telling the official history of the system tray, Chen points out that early development builds of Windows 95 had a "tray" instead of a taskbar: Amusingly enough, people still call it the "system tray" and the confusion continues 17 years later. Microsoft's Raymond Chen wrote about this issue back in 2003. Yes, Microsoft employees have repeatedly called it the "system tray" in various documents over the years, much to the apparent consternation of the Windows shell team, so named because they're in charge of the Windows desktop "shell," which includes the taskbar.
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