In this section, we will describe the many features of the GNOME Panel. It sits at the bottom of your screen and contains buttons for the the tools you frequently use. A typical GNOME Panel is shown in figure 9-2.
The GNOME Panel can contain several types of objects:
menu buttons, such as the
button (with the footprint);buttons that launch applications (in short, launchers);
applets, i.e. small programs that work inside the panel, such as clocks or various load monitors;
some other types of buttons, such as the
button.To use any of the buttons, just click on it with the left mouse button. As for applets, many of them (such as the Clock applet) just do their work without your interaction; others (such as GKB Keyboard Switcher) will react to your mouse clicks. You can also learn more about any object on the panel, configure it, or remove it from the panel by right-clicking on it and choosing the appropriate action from the pop-up menu.
To show some of the most useful buttons and applets you can place on the GNOME Panel, we list below all objects shown in the panel in figure 9-2. You can easily add these and other buttons to your panel, or remove unneeded objects as described in Configuring The Panel.
Starting on the left-hand side is the GNOME GNOME Main Menu.
, which contains all your applications, from text editors to office applications to configuration tools. (And games, too!) This is the most frequently used button in the GNOME Panel. An overview of what you can find in this menu will be given inNext to it is the
button. It allows you to log out of your session, either because you are leaving work, or to let other users to use the computer. If you click on it, it will prompt you for confirmation and ask if you want to save the changes you made to your session. Selecting this option will save the current state of your session, i.e. the list of applications you currently have running and their state, so that next time you login, GNOME will start the same applications for you and you can continue your work. (The logout dialog can be configured in GNOME Control Center, which we will discuss later on). After you click in the logout dialog, GNOME will close all your applications and the computer will return to the login screen (this is the screen where you have to enter your user name and password).Next is the
button. As you probably noticed, most GNOME application and applet names are extremely logical. This button allows you to lock your screen while you are away from your computer. To unlock the screen, you must enter your password. This helps to avoid unpleasant the surprise of someone reading your documents or messing up your files while you are away.This icon symbolizes the Nautilus file manager. Clicking on it will launch a powerful, multi-functional application with which you can browse through your files and access the GNOME Help System. You can also check out your favorite news sites headlines through the News tab, as well as browse the web.
The
icon gives you access to the GNOME Help Browser which comprises the GNOME User's Guide, Man Pages, Info Pages and GNOME Documents.![]() | Although the information contained in the GNOME Help Browser is accurate, it is considered to be slightly out of date. Please use Nautilus's Help tab to consult GNOME-specific documentation. |
The GNOME terminal is a GNOME-specific command line. It gives you access to the most powerful tool of all: the command line. Please note that there are many different terminal programs, each one providing access to the command line. If you explore the Terminal section in GNOME's Main Menu, you will find many options for command lines, such as eterm, xterm, etc.
The GNOME Control Center will help you configure your graphical environment to your liking.
Here's a screen shot of it:
Feel free to explore it as it contains many options. You can personalize the appearance of your menus and panels, desktop background and mouse settings, default start-up applications, and much much more.
This applet is called the Takslist and shows you the list of all application windows (including minimized, or iconified ones). You can use this applet to quickly switch to the window you want (by clicking on its name in the tasklist), close a window or even kill a misbehaving application (right-click on the window name and choose the appropriate action from the pop-up menu).
The GNOME Desktop Guide applet (sometimes also called GNOME Pager) allows you to split your work area into several workspaces (sometimes also called virtual desktops). Think of them as being several desktops, containing different applications and your physical screen showing only one of them at any given moment. In our example, four workspaces are set up. In your daily work, you can separate your applications logically: in the first workspace, you could place your communication applications (Internet, chat, e-mail); in the second one, your favorite text editor, and so on. To surf through them, simply click on the one of the four areas of the GNOME Desktop Guide applet and your physical desktop (the one you are looking at right now) will change and show the contents of that workspace.
The clock. You may change its properties by right-clicking on the icon and choosing Properties: you can change it to 12/24 hour and a couple of simple options. However, you may select another clock in the -> -> -> -> . Some clocks even have a mail-check option.
Finally, the Mail check. By default, it is not configured. Right-click on it and access the section which will open the Mail Check Applet Manual inside the Nautilus file manager. It is fairly simple to configure and when done, very convenient.
Here are other applets which can come in handy. You can access them through the
-> menu and add them to your GNOME Panel by right-clicking on the panel and choosing the -> menus.The GKB Keyboard Switcher allows you to switch your keyboard to one of many available layouts, covering languages from Azerbaijani to Vietnamese. If you are trilingual, you can easily select, for example, French, English and Spanish as your main keyboard languages. The flag (Québec in our screen shot) represents the language you are currently using. Simply click on the icon to change your keyboard's language. To add or modify it, right-click on the icon and choose Properties.
![]() | Please note that currently, the keyboard switcher will only work correctly if the language you have chosen uses the same character set as your default language (the one you selected during installation or during login). For example, if your default language is English, you can use French or Spanish keyboards but you won't be able to use Russian or Greek ones. Thus, if you need to type in Russian, you will need not only to select Russian keyboard but also switch your default language (locale) to Russian. You can do this by issuing /usr/sbin/localedrake on the command line. Note that you must be root in order to launch it. |
Next is the Load Average applet, which indicates your processor's load state. If you see it skyrocket and get all yellow, green and gray, it means one or many of your applications is going crazy... We will see later how to fix this in the Reference Manual.
To insert this applet on your panel, choose the
-> -> -> -> -> item.The panel (as well as most GNOME components) is highly configurable: you can add or remove objects, change the panel size, color, or button appearance, and more. For a comprehensive description of these options, we refer the reader to GNOME Panel Manual (you can find it in
-> -> ). Here are some of the most useful operations:To remove an object from the panel, right-click on it and choose
;To add an application launcher button to the panel, find this application in the
, right-click on it and choose ;To add an applet, logout button, or other object to the panel, choose
-> -> and choose the desired object;To move a panel object, drag it to the new location with the middle mouse button (if you don't have a three-button mouse, press on the two buttons simultaneously);
To move the whole panel to a different side of the screen, drag it with the middle mouse button.