Sunday, February 1, 2009

Customizing the GNOME Panel - Adding a Program Launcher to the Panel

Now let’s move on to something a bit more practical—adding program launchers to the panel. While it is very easy to run an application by navigating through the Application menu, there are no doubt some applications that you will be using frequently enough to want easy access to them. OpenOffice.org Writer is probably one of those.


Method 1
There are a number of different ways to add a launcher to the panel, but let’s start with the most conventional. To add a panel launcher for OpenOffice.org Writer, follow these steps:

1. Right-click any open space within the top panel.

2. Select Add to Panel in the popup menu to bring up the Add to Panel window.

3. In that window, click the Application Launcher button.

4. A new screen will then appear, showing the contents of the Application menu. Click the small arrow next to Office to expand that menu, and then scroll down and click OpenOffice.org Word Processor to highlight it.

5. Click the Add button, and then click Close to complete the process.


Method 2
There is another way to add program launchers to the panel, and it is actually a tad quicker. As an example, we’ll add a launcher for the OpenOffice.org spreadsheet program, Calc. Here are the steps:

1. Go to the Applications menu, and navigate your way to (but do not click) Office -> OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet.

2. With your cursor over OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet, right-click.

3. In the popup menu that then appears, select (that’s the usual ol’ leftclick this time) Add this launcher to panel. The Calc launcher will then appear in the panel.


Method 3
Now that you’ve learned two ways to add application launchers to the panel, I might as well let you in on a third, even easier method. Just open a menu, select the item you want to add to the panel, and then drag it there.

Source of Information : Ubuntu for Non-Geeks (2nd Ed)

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