Applets

The GNOME panel allows the embedding of small programs, called panel "applets". These applets provide quick access to frequently used information, and permit the user to get common tasks done faster.

Panel applets distributed with the GNOME panel include a laptop battery monitor, an audio CD player, system load monitors, an assortment of clocks, a volume control, a desktop switcher (pager), and a fish called Wanda.

Developers who wish to turn their standalone gtk+ programs into panel applets will find that the process is extremely simple. The panel comes with a library intended to make the task of writing applets easy - all that is necessary is to create an applet widget, and add the contents as with any other container.

The applets use The GNOME CORBA Framework for comunication with the panel. The panel however provides a simple library, which is in fact a GTK+ widget, which completely hides all the corba API, and makes writing applets, as easy as writing a normal GTK+ application.

It is sometimes desirable to have applets where one process serves several applet windows, such as a clock applet where the user has two instances of the clock on say two different panels. This can be done from one process, thus saving memory.

To make the applet's life easier, the panel takes care of all the session management, position saving, applet launching, and sends the applet signals to dynamically react to changes in the enviroment (e.g. Changed orientationof the panel, size changes, etc...)