As my readers may know, I use the Opera web browser as my primary browser. In addition to having the usability features that I desire (and have grown used to), it also winds up seldom being the target of malware writers due to its low market share. But as much as I love it, I do have to complain about one issue. Opera insists on putting its big red ‘O’ icon in my system tray. A search of the Interwebs turned up the news that there is no settings/preference option to turn it off. The only way to get rid of it is to change the Windows shortcut by adding the command line option “/notrayicon”. However, that even appears to be broken in the current release. And even more frustrating, when it did work, the automatic updates feature always removes the parameter from the shortcut when the update installs.

This wouldn’t be an issue if Microsoft Windows XP (which I am currently using at work), had more room in the taskbar. But, I am stuck with this horribly cramped taskbar. In Windows 7, in what has to be one of the few actual UI improvements Microsoft has made to Windows EVER, the taskbar is actually very nice in that you can pin apps to the taskbar and when they run, they don’t take additional space. I guess the Windows UI just got so bad over time (starting with the removal of the Program Manager) that it hit rock bottom and just about any random change they made to it would be an improvement.

Anyway, I’m hoping that Opera will fix this the way it needs to be fixed. Give me a preference option to turn off the system tray icon.

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