restoring from system tray by Alt+Tab - why not every time?

[leopoldus]

"If Totalcmd doesn't reappear from the system tray after you press Alt+Tab, you need to press ENTER to reactivate it" - this warning message is what one can see when activating "Minimize to tray" option. From this phrase I can suggest, that normally Totalcmd's window reappears without need to press Enter. However at my Windows XP Pro I have the contraversal situation: only sometimes TC reappear immidiatle and in the most cases I need to press Enter
Is there any known factors wich TC's such behavour can depent of?[/b]

[ghisler(Author)]

The problem is that it's not possible to detect on NT based systems whether the user pressed Alt+Tab, or whether TC was activated because all other programs were closed. Therefore you must explicitly press Enter so TC knows that it should re-open. If you do not like this, do not use "minimize to tray".

[leopoldus]

If you do not like this, do not use "minimize to tray".

Thanks for the explanation!
But the problem is that I like the both to have TC minimized to tray and not to have to press Eneter every time. Well, I see, that some dreams would not become to reality

[karlchen]

Just a side note which may or may not make you feel better:

If you instruct ProcessExplorer to minimize to the systray (Hide when minimized => icon will go to the systray only), it will not be possible to re-activate ProcessExplorer using Alt-Tab at all. You will have to click on the systray icon once.
The same is true if you tell the Windows Task Manager to "hide if minimized". Here you need even 2 clicks, either double-click on the icon or right-click and click on "Restore".

Regards,
Karl

[leopoldus]

Just a side note which may or may not make you feel better:

Rather not
Indeed such behaviour is a standard for every minimisable-to-tray application. Every - except TC. But there is the point, that we are used to get from TC something more than a standard solution.

[icfu]

Don't use the TC minimize to tray feature but something which works, like minimize to tray included in TaskSwitchXP:
http://www.ntwind.com/software/taskswitchxp.html

Icfu

[leopoldus]

Don't use the TC minimize to tray feature but something which works, like minimize to tray included in TaskSwitchXP:
http://www.ntwind.com/software/taskswitchxp.html

That's a wise advice! Thanks!

[ghisler(Author)]

Indeed it's a service for keyboard-oriented people to reactivate TC from tray also with the keyboard. I don't know of any other program which allows this. It worked perfectly in the good old days of Windows 95 and 98, where the Alt+Tab could be detected even by the restored program, but it requires the additional Enter on NT based systems where the keys sent to one program (the task manager) are shielded from other apps (Total Commander).