SystemTray/README.md

1.4 KiB

SystemTray

Cross-platform SystemTray and AppIndicator support for java applications.

This libraries only purpose is to show reasonably decent system-tray icons and app-indicators with a simple popup-menu.

There are a number of problems on Linux with the Swing (and SWT) system-tray icons, namely that:

  1. Swing system-tray icons on linux do not support transparent backgrounds (they have a white background)
  2. Swing/SWT do not support app-indicators, which are necessary on more recent versions of linux
  3. Swing popup menus look like crap
    • system-tray icons use a JMenuPopup, which looks nicer than the java 'regular' one.
    • app-indicators use native popups.

This is for cross-platform use, specifically - linux 32/64, mac 32/64, and windows 32/64. Java 6+

Note: This library does NOT use SWT for system-tray support, only for the purpose
      of lessening the jar dependencies. Changing it to be SWT-based is not be 
      difficult, just remember that SWT on linux *already* starts up the GTK main 
      event loop.
Note: If you use the attached JNA libraries, you **MUST** load the respective
      native libraries yourself, especially with JNA (as the loading logic has
      been removed from the jar)
Note: This project was heavily influence by the excellent Lantern project,
      *Many* thanks to them for figuring out AppIndicators via JNA.
      https://github.com/getlantern/lantern