The Firestarter tray application offers an convenient and non-obtrusive way of running the Firestarter GUI in the background. The tray application is available when running either Red Hat 8 or GNOME 2.2 or later. The Notification Area applet must have been added to an GNOME panel for the tray application to show.
The tray application is the round button with a bolt shown in the picture to the right (the other two tray applications are, from left to right, GnomeICU and the Red Hat Up2Date notification tool).
The full benefits of the tray application is realized when used in combination with the "System tray operation mode" setting, available in the preferences. In this mode, closing the Firestarter program window will merely hide the program instead of exiting the application. The program window is also hidden from the list of open windows. Double clicking, or clicking with the middle mouse button, on the tray application icon will restore the program.
The icon of the tray application will change to reflect the current state of the firewall.
When the blue button is shown, the firewall is running without problem.
The gray button shows that the firewall is stopped.
The red button with an black cross represents the halted state.
The red base with an bolt shows that an hit has occurred. Hovering
the mouse pointer over the icon will show the hit source, as an resolved hostname, in an tool tip.
Clicking the icon resets the application to the running state. A simple animation will be played
on consecutive hits.
The tray application has an context menu, accessed via the right-mouse button, that allows you to start and stop the firewall and quit the program.