Re: Extensions, Applets, ETC

[Colin Walters <walters verbum org>]

On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 2:10 PM, Scott S. McCoy <tag cpan org> wrote:
> Hello all,
>     I'm searching for documentation, information, notes etc on any existing
> or planned gnome shell extension APIs will be designed and exposed.  So far
> I haven't found much, does anything exist or is this early enough that the
> plans are mostly non-existent?

This breaks down in 3 ways:

1) "Plugins": Additional code with a well-defined API for a specific
part of the shell.  Example: new search types.  For this we will be
adding APIs incrementally.
2) "Extensions" (Firefox style): We load your javascript, you can do
whatever you want via monkey-patching, etc.  I have a patch for this
in-progress:  https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=599661
3) "Applets": No plans for additional items on the panel at this time.
 However, we have experimented with a sidebar for larger
"widgets/gadgets".  I think probably what will work out a bit better
is a dedicated desktop for them.  The development API for them of
course is another issue, but I'd like to start from the use cases (CPU
monitor, weather display).