Menus

In addition to the Main Menu, discussed in the section called The Main Menu, you can also add "normal menus" to a Panel. An example menu, in this case a Favorites menu containing three application launchers and one submenu titled Games, is shown in Figure 6. Unlike the Main Menu, normal menus only contain whatever launchers and submenus you place in them - no default submenus, Run... command, etc. as the Main Menu has. You can also add any submenu of your Favorites menu or the Programs menu as a separate menu to a Panel; to do so, bring up this submenu from the Main Menu, right click on the submenu title, and select Add this as menu to panel.

Figure 6. An Example Menu

Adding a Menu to a Panel

To learn how to add a menu to a Panel, see the section called Adding objects to the panel.

Tearing Off a Menu

All menus in GNOME have the tear-off feature: if you left-click on the "perforation" (thin dashed line at the top of the menu, right above the menu title), the menu will be turned into a separate window on your desktop, which will stay there even after you move the mouse cursor elsewhere. This is very convenient if you will be using the same command from some deeply nested submenu frequently. To remove a "torn-off" menu from your desktop, click on the Close button in the window title (its appearance and location depends on the window manager you are using, but usually it is the rightmost button, labelled by an "x").

Configuring a Menu

You can easily change a menu name and icon (for user menus only, not for submenus taken from the Main Menu). To do so, click on the menu, right-click on the menu title (at the very top of the list, above all other items), and select Properties… from the pop-up menu. This will bring up the Desktop Entry Properties dialog, quite similar to the Launcher Properties dialog.

To add a new item to the menu, click on the menu button, right-click on the Menu name, and select