When Microsoft Agent runs, its icon appears in the notification area of the taskbar. This icon provides access to Microsoft Agent's properties as well as user control of hiding and showing characters.
Figure 1. The Microsoft Agent Taskbar Icon
Moving the pointer over the taskbar icon displays a tip window that reflects the current state of Microsoft Agent. For example, during the normal operating state, the tip window might display "Say the name of a character to display it" or "Microsoft Agent is running."
Single-clicking the taskbar icon has no effect. However, double-clicking the icon displays the Microsoft Agent property sheet.
Right-clicking the icon displays a pop-up menu that has the following commands:
Hide | Show CharacterName
…
Hide All Characters
Open | Close Commands Window
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Microsoft Agent Properties
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Exit Microsoft Agent
The Hide | Show CharacterName command lists all characters that have been loaded. The command plays the character's Hiding state animation and hides the character. The Show CharacterName entry makes the character visible and plays the character's Showing state animation.
The Hide All Characters command hides all the characters, playing their associated Hiding animation.
Microsoft Agent Properties displays the Microsoft Agent property sheet. This command appears as bold text to indicate that this is the default command for the menu.
The Exit command quits the Microsoft Agent services. Because applications may depend on these services, the Exit command prompts for confirmation, informing the user that exiting Microsoft Agent can have unexpected results. If the user confirms the exit process, Microsoft Agent removes all characters and its taskbar icon and stops running. However, if another application starts up and requests Microsoft Agent's services, Microsoft Agent partially restarts, displaying its suspended icon in the taskbar notification area. It also displays a message that offers to resume full operation. If the user confirms restarting, Microsoft Agent resumes full operation. If the user declines, Microsoft Agent exits. The user can choose whether to be notified again through a check box in the message.
In the "suspended" state, right-clicking the taskbar displays the following menu items:
Restart Microsoft Agent
Exit Microsoft Agent
Restarting Microsoft Agent fully restores the server and displays the normal (non-suspended) Microsoft Agent icon. It also resets the notification message option to always prompt and resets the contents of the right-click pop-up menu for the taskbar icon to its normal configuration. Choosing Exit in the suspended state quits Microsoft Agent until another application requests its services.