A Glimpse of GNU/Linux

Creating an application which resides in the System tray adds charms to an otherwise simple application. Pleople tend to value accessibility and userfriendliness  than the quality of the program itself (pardon my friends, I am sure that you are not one of those chaps)

But, again it is fun to create a simple gui which demonstrates how to create an active System tray application using pygtk. My simple app goes like this.

#######################################################################################

#!/usr/bin/env python

import gtk

class StatusIcc:

    # activate callback
    def activate( self, widget, data=None):
    dialog = gtk.MessageDialog(
        parent         = None,
        flags          = gtk.DIALOG_DESTROY_WITH_PARENT,
        type           = gtk.MESSAGE_INFO,
        buttons        = gtk.BUTTONS_YES_NO,
        message_format = “Did you like this Activation example \n by Maxin B. John <maxinbjohn@gmail.com>?”)
    dialog.set_title(‘Popup example’)
        dialog.connect(‘response’, self.show_hide)
    dialog.show()
   
   # Show_Hide callback
    def  show_hide(self, widget,response_id, data= None):
           if response_id == gtk.RESPONSE_YES:
               widget.hide()
    else:
        widget.hide()
           

    # destroyer callback
    def  destroyer(self, widget,response_id, data= None):
        if response_id == gtk.RESPONSE_OK:
            gtk.main_quit()
    else:
        widget.hide()

    # popup callback
    def popup(self, button, widget, data=None):
        dialog = gtk.MessageDialog(
        parent         = None,
        flags          = gtk.DIALOG_DESTROY_WITH_PARENT,
        type           = gtk.MESSAGE_INFO,
        buttons        = gtk.BUTTONS_OK_CANCEL,
        message_format = “Do you want to close this Status Icon program?”)
    dialog.set_title(‘Popup Window’)
        dialog.connect(‘response’, self.destroyer)
    dialog.show()
     
       

    def __init__(self):
        # create a new Status Icon
        self.staticon = gtk.StatusIcon()
        self.staticon.set_from_stock(gtk.STOCK_ABOUT)
        self.staticon.set_blinking(True)
    self.staticon.connect(“activate”, self.activate)
        self.staticon.connect(“popup_menu”, self.popup)
        self.staticon.set_visible(True)

        # invoking the main()
        gtk.main()

if __name__ == “__main__”:
    statusicon = StatusIcc()
####################################################################################

Hmm , The code is pretty simple . It is using gtk.StatusIcon() for the System Tray app. The most important signal for the StatusIcon are “activate” and “poup_menu”. The callbacks for those singals are also self explanatory. So not much comments on the code. Now lets see my
app in action.

The Information (i) symbol in the system tray area is the running application. Right click and Left clicks will generate the “poup_menu” and “activate” signals respectively. 
Try the tray app for you next programming adventure