Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 6th Apr 2011 17:50 UTC, submitted by Cytor
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Long story short, in Win95 MS introduced the notification area (aka "tray icons") but did not strictly restrict it to system notifications.
Every damn app maker on the planet started abusing it and docking his apps into it.
Microsoft then tried to cover the problem in Windows XP and subsequent releases by making icons autohide in that area... which is a band-aid, not a fix, and a stupid one.
GNOME Shell makes this distinction clear and doesn't allow apps to show icons into the upper right corner, which is reserved for system stuff.




In that case, no problem at all as far as I'm concerned. 
Member since:
2005-07-23
Indeed, the GNOME Shell doesn't use the "Indicator Applet" (aka libappindicator or libindicate or something like that); but keep in mind that applications actually had to add optional support for libappindicator, not the other way around.
Let me illustrate with an example: Specto already supported the standard notification system (libnotify) + "tray icon" (gtk status icon) for years, but it had to be extended and complexified with a bunch of if/else in the code to make it work with Ubuntu's indicator applet.
When this applet is not detected/available on the user's panel/system, Specto reverts to using the standard notification system... which is what is used by gnome shell, nothing much has changed in this regard.
And app developers have somewhat less to worry about because the new notification system's design paradigm solves the friggin' problem we've been plagued with since Windows 95's introduction of the notification area (aka the "tray icons").
As I understand it, in gnome shell's notification system, new possibilities are added for application developers wanting to extend the precision of the behavior of their notifications (ex: to be able to mute them when the user is "Busy") and integrate better than they already do.