Solaris Common Desktop Environment: Advanced User's and System Administrator's Guide

Creating a Specialized Front Panel Control

In most cases, you do not need to provide a Front Panel control definition; the user can add the application to the Front Panel by dropping the action icon on the Install Icon control in a subpanel.

You might want to create a Front Panel configuration file containing a control definition for your application if you want users to be able to install a control that behaves differently than the action icon—for example, if the control monitors a file and changes appearance when the monitored file changes.

Front Panel configuration files are placed in the app_root/dt/appconfig/types/language directory. The naming convention is name.fp.

If you supply a configuration file containing a control, the user can add the control to a subpanel by dropping the *.fp file on the Install Icon control in the subpanel.

For example, the following definition can be placed in a Front Panel configuration file in the application group. If the user drops this file on an Install Icon control in a subpanel, a control is created in the subpanel that runs a single instance of the BestTextEditor application. If BestTextEditor is already running, the window is moved to the top of the window stack in the current workspace.

CONTROL BestTextEditorControl
 {
 	TYPE						icon
 	ICON						BTEFPanel	
 	PUSH_RECALL				True
 	CLIENT_NAME				BTEd
 	PUSH_ACTION				BTEditor
 	DROP_ACTION				BTEditor
 	HELP_STRING				Starts the BestTextEditor application.
 }

For additional information about creating Front Panel configuration files, see: