Newbie Questions - Applets, Menus, Panels... Oh My!

["Chris J. Karr" <br284 geocities com>]

Hello! I am a newbie to the whole Gnome thing. I recently downloaded the
RedHat RPMS from the Gnome FTP site. While Gnome is a great product,
I have a few questions:

1. The applet technology is not working for me. When I try to start an
applet, I get a message stating:

Could not communicate with the panel

At the moment, I am running solely the panel. Is it required that other
Gnome environment programs run?

2. On a side note -- How do I "properly" start Gnome. I have read that
gnome-session is not completely stable. What is the procedure to start
so that I get the maximum benefit from Gnome and my windowmanager
(Enlightenment).

3. On the Main Menu, how do I get rid of the annoying ... image that
follows each non-folder item? Is this hardcoded, or a graphic somewhere?
BTW -- I'm running the 0.27/0.28 binaries.

4. Is there any documentation available?

Thanks in advance and I apologize in advance if I've asked any common
questions.

-Chris