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@node GtkStatusIcon
@chapter GtkStatusIcon
Display an icon in the system tray

@section Overview
The "system tray" or notification area is normally used for transient icons that
indicate some special state. For example, a system tray icon might appear to
tell the user that they have new mail, or have an incoming instant message, or
something along those lines. The basic idea is that creating an icon in the
notification area is less annoying than popping up a dialog.

A @code{<gtk-status-icon>} object can be used to display an icon in a "system
tray". The icon can have a tooltip, and the user can interact with it by
activating it or popping up a context menu. Critical information should not
solely be displayed in a @code{<gtk-status-icon>}, since it may not be visible
(e.g. when the user doesn't have a notification area on his panel). This can be
checked with @code{gtk-status-icon-is-embedded}.

On X11, the implementation follows the freedesktop.org "System Tray"
@uref{http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Standards/systemtray-spec,specification}.
Implementations of the "tray" side of this specification can be found e.g. in
the GNOME and KDE panel applications.

Note that a GtkStatusIcon is @emph{not} a widget, but just a @code{<gobject>}.
Making it a widget would be impractical, since the system tray on Win32 doesn't
allow to embed arbitrary widgets.

@section Usage
@include defuns-gtkstatusicon.xml.texi

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