GNOME Applets

Applet Basics

What Are Applets?

Applets are one of the most popular and useful objects you can add to your Panel to customize your desktop. An applet is a small application which runs inside a small area of your Panel. Applets have been written for a wide range of purposes. Some are very powerful interactive tools, such as the Mixer Applet which allows you to easily control your system sound. Others are simple system monitors, displaying information such as the amount of power left in the battery on your laptop (see Battery Charge Monitor) or weather information(see GNOME Weather). Some are simply for amusement(see gEyes).

Applets are similar to swallowed applications in that both of them reside within the Panel. However, swallowed applications are generally applications which were not designed to run within the Panel. Typically one will swallow an application which already exists in the main desktop area, putting it into your Panel. The application will continue to run in the Panel until you end the application or unswallow it, placing it back onto the main part of your desktop when you need to.

Several example applets are shown in Figure 1. From left to right, they are: (1) Mixer Applet, which allows you to turn on/off sound and control its volume by clicking on the applet. (2) Sound Monitor Applet, which displays the current volume of sound being played and allows you to control various sound features. (3) GTCD Applet, a CD player which has all its controls available in the applet and displays the track and time. (4) Drive Mount Applet, used to mount and unmount drives with a single click of the mouse. (5) Desk Guide which allows you to view and control multiple virtual screens. (6) Tasklist Applet which allows you to control your various windows and applications.

There are many other applets to choose from. The rest of this chapter will explain the basic information to get you started adding, moving, and removing applets from your Panels and using them. The following chapters go through each of the standard GNOME applets describing them in detail. There are also additional applets which can be downloaded off the Web. See The GNOME Software Map for lists of additional GNOME applications and applets.

As you read through the the rest of this chapter, you should try adding and removing applets from your Panel and experiment with them freely.

Adding, Moving, and Removing Applets

The Right-Click Pop-Up Menu

Clicking the right mouse button on any applet brings up a pop-up menu. This menu always has certain standard menu items in it and often has additional items which vary depending on the particular applet.

Other Common Pop-Up Items

Many applets also have other items in their right-click pop-up menus. Some of the more common ones are:

Properties...

The Properties... menu item opens the Properties dialog (see the Section called The Applet Properties Dialog) for the applet. Many applets have properties dialogs, which allow you to configure the behavior and appearance of the applet.

Run...

The Run... menu item generally invokes a program which is related to the applet in some way but which runs in its own window rather than in the panel. For example:

  1. The CPU Load applet, which monitors what programs are running, has a Run gtop... menu item. Selecting this menu item starts GTop, which allows you to view and control programs which are running.

  2. The CD Player applet has a Run gtcd... menu item which starts the GNOME CD Player when selected, which has more capabilities than the applet.