Re: Applets and GNOME 3

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

On Tue, 2010-09-28 at 12:32 +0100, Richard Hughes wrote:
> Okay, we all know applets are a naughty word with GNOME 3. What do we
> do with them - delete them from git master? Would this be a
> precondition on an project getting the badge of "GNOME 3" ?

Generally, it's a good thing if GNOME 3 modules work coherently when
used with the GNOME 2 shell components (gnome-panel, metacity,
notification-daemon) for 3.0.

So, I wouldn't recommend deleting gnome-panel applets or tray icons if
they are serving UI role that is replaced in the GNOME 3 shell by
something else.

But:

 gnome-panel applets are not exposed to the user at all in the
 GNOME Shell, so they can never be the only way to do something
 or the expected way to do something.

 Tray icons will be displayed in GNOME Shell, but will provide
 a less-than-ideal user experience. (They will be hidden in the
 message tray under the assumption that they have something
 to do with notifications or running tasks.)

The starting point should be figuring out how your application works in
GNOME 3. (Jon McCann is working on guidelines for replacing tray icon
usage.) Then if that way of working works fine with GNOME 2 as well,
then you can delete the tray icons and applets you have around. (We've
discussed a little trying to make notifications in the GNOME 3 versions
of GNOME 2 shell components behavior more like GNOME 3 - have them be
persistent, but no real conclusions about whether that makes sense.)

But if that way of working doesn't work with the GNOME 2 shell
components, it might be necessary to show tray icons or install panel
applets to support operation with GNOME 2 shell components.

- Owen