Dear Microsoft, what is this?
(A pre-warning: don’t read this post if you don’t like extremely nit-picky complaints. No griping about it later on, you’ve been warned.)
Dear Microsoft,
What is this?
That might be a little hard to read, so let’s make it a bit bigger and call out exactly what I’m talking about:
What is that weird gap to the left of my network status notification area (or system tray) icon? Is that some other notification icon that just happens to be invisible and really skinny? Is that the network status icon taking extra space to use later? Or maybe Google dropped the ball and their Google Desktop icon (the one to the left) is taking more space than it needs.
Now I know why there’s space to the left of the clock, it’s to set it apart from the notification area. Is that mysterious gap supposed to represent a division between Microsoft-installed icons and third party ones? Is that what that is? Is it just a bug? Will it be fixed in the upcoming SP1?
I know it’s a tiny, stupid, petty thing, but it drives me nuts every time I look at the task bar.
Going to take a guess and say it’s likely to separate OS icons (volume, network, battery indicator, etc.) from application icons (everything else). Other Microsoft apps show up to the left of it. I thought it made sense when I saw it the first time.
Yeah, after talking to a few people I came to that conclusion as well. Still, it wasn’t a “a-ha!” moment for me, someone else had to point it out, and I still think the gap looks weird– although at least now I understand why it’s there.
Thanks for reading.
Damn, I never even noticed that until now. Damn.
Damn.