The panel and its applets

The panel is invoked directly by the GNOME session manager when you type gnome-session, but it can be also be invoked directly from the shell by typing

$ panel &

The panel will bring up a bar at the bottom of the screen, shown in Figure 2-3 (note that this bar will run across the entire bottom of your screen — in this picture I have narrowed it so that it will fit in a browser more conveniently.

Starting programs with the panel is easy: you simply click on the foot icon, from which you will get the top level launcher menu, as shown in Figure 2-4.

Most of the entries in the panel menu are submenus; Figure 2-5 shows an example of running the CD player from the Audio submenu.

Here are a few things you should explore in the panel: you would probably discover them anyway because exploring the panel is an entertaining thing to do, but this will speed the process up.

First of all: it is possible to take panel menu entries and create short-cut icons on the panel itself. You do it with the Add to panel submenu of the panel menu which you obtain when you click the foot button. You can see and example of this in Figure 2-7.

The result is another icon on the panel (Figure 2-7); clicking that icon will bring up the associated application.

Next: try clicking on the little arrows at the two sides of the panel: they allow you shrink or re-expand the panel, so you can get it out of the way easily.

The other feature I will mention now is panel applets. Applets are little programs which require little visual space and thus can be run on the panel. There are many applets, such as a clock, a mail alert, and shrunken versions of the CD player and the mixer.