This may be a bit "Fitt's Law"-ish. When using the systray icons in xftaskbar, you should be able to put the mouse as far as it can go toward the edge, whether it be the bottom edge or the top edge. How this is accomplished is irrelevant to me, I just want to throw my mouse up and only worry about lining up horizontally to click on a systray icon. Otherwise, that border is just dead unused space. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3.
I don't agree, sorry. Systray icons are suposed to be used as notification, not as cross-platform applets. If you find you need to click on them very often, it sounds to me like the authors have chosen the wrong interface. The XEMBED interface doesn't lend itself very well to these kinds of manipulations of the icons. The icons will generally be smaller than other panel items, so putting them on the screen edge will make them look out of place.