Confused about taskbar notification area

[Guest]

I am very confused about the
taskbar notification area and
hope someone may shed some light
on it.

What is active (or inactive) items ?
(is it base on the process's CPU usage?)

Hide inactive items - What does hide
mean?
Delete the icon totally from
the area or hide underneath the
left arrow "<" collapsing sign.

Under what condition does the left
arrow "<" collapsing (I assumed)
sign appear and what type of items
will be hidden by it?

Thanks for any clarification.

 

[Guest]

Active, and Inactive items in the taskbar, are the icons currently running.
Say you have on auto-hide inactive icons, and you see nothing but the
collapsing <<, that means all of your notification icons are currently 'not
doing anything' so to speak. If you see messenger and the <<, then messenger
is active in doing whatever it is that it does, while the others are
inactive. You may notice as the day passes, more of the icons disappear
behind the <<, which means thru out the day, they haven't been doing much, so
they hide as inactive. To answer your hide question, hide means to put behind
the collapsing <<'s, and only the inactive (or low activity) icons will hide
there. Hope this clairifies what you are confused about, and didn't make your
confusion worse. -Tony