[ Thanks to BeOpen
for this link. ]
“This is the first article of the series, “Writing GNOME
Panel Applets”. We will go through the basic steps you need to know
so you can successfully write an applet for the GNOME panel. We
will finish this first article by looking at a very simple program
example you can build, and going through it line by line.”
“The GNOME panel plays a very important role in the GNOME
desktop environment. It is a neat piece of software to which you
can add menus and launchers for quick access to your favorite
utilities and programs. You can also add small programs, known as
applets. Applets are designed just as any other “real” program, but
with the critical difference that they are not assigned to a window
of their own (as with “real” Gnome applications). Instead, applets
get a small area of the panel, from which they can be controlled.
This means you can work with your “real” applications on the
desktop, and still have access to your favorite mp3-player, system
monitor, or whatever you like to have on your panel. Most people
have at least two applets on their GNOME panel: the pager and the
date/time applet.”
“Writing your own panel applet is not hard at all. Actually,
developing applets is very similar to developing standard
GNOME/Gtk+ programs. You see, many of Gtk+’s functions have
corresponding alternatives in the applet library libpanel_applet,
and this makes it very easy to go from developing usual Gnome
applications to panel applets. Let’s take a look at a simple
example.”