Not everybody has menu bar on their panels, some people use the menu
applet and some people may not have anything on their panel. How on earth can they access these?This should not be the problem of Gnome. Gnome ships with a default layout for a reason. If the user wants to *remove* stuff from the default layout, the user should expect to also lose functionality. Purring offtopic items on application menus instead just because people don't want a panel (which is one of the main parts of any modern DE/OS) is not the answer. Standardization over a good UI that is not removable, is the answer.
Eugenia