Understanding applets

[Edward Betts <edward hairnet demon co uk>]

Fvwm and afterstep can SWALLOW applications in there button bars
WindowMaker uses animated icons in its one.

So all of the programs like wmload or wmmail work with or WITHOUT
windowsmaker.

Now I turn to applets 'little' programs that sit on the panel communicating by
cobra? So the panel is a container and these are objects. Is there some reason
why this is better than swallowing some apps, the mailcheck uses 3M of memory
for gods sake. Will that last problem be solved by orbit?

Is the idea behind the applets that they are independent of the panel, could I
write a floating button bar and include code to load applets on to it without
recompiling the applets?
-- 
Edward Betts