WHAT'S RUNNING?

The notification area, also sometimes called the system tray (or just tray), is the area immediately to the left of the clock in the bottom-right corner of the screen. Many of the programs running in the background have tray icons here that you can use to open their window or to configure them. Figure 2-3 shows icons for satellite internet service, the LAN (local area network) connection, antivirus software, and sound card's volume control (which is currently muted).

Figure 2-3: The notification area.

Notice the left-pointing arrow button; this indicates that some of the tray icons are hidden. Windows XP hides some of the ones you don't use very often. Click that button to expand the set of icons. Figure 2-4 shows two more icons appeared in the tray.

Figure 2-4: All items in the notification area.

The purpose of this notification area is twofold. It lets you see at a glance what's running in the background, and it also lets you access the background applications.

Most of the icons in the notification area can be used two ways:

• You can double-click an icon to open the program's window (for most programs).
• You can right-click an icon and select from a shortcut menu. For example, you can right-click the network connection icon and select Disable, Status, Repair, or Open Network Connections. Some icons also have a command on this menu that closes or disables the application and removes its icon from the tray -- until the next time you start your computer (if it's set to load at startup) or until you restart that application.