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How To Run Gnome Panel Applets in Xfce
XfApplet is a small program that allows you to run Gnome panel applets from the XFCE panel. It's available in the Ubuntu universe repositories. You can install it from the command line using aptitude. (You can also use apt-get.)
If you're not using Ubuntu you can download the XfApplet source package and compile it for your system.
Once the installation is complete, right click in the XFCE panel and select Add New Item. Scroll through the list and select XfApplet and click Add. A pop-up will then come up where you can select which Gnome applet to add. I chose Time Tracker so I could use the Hamster Applet from XFCE. You can only run one Gnome applet in an instance of XfApplet, but you can run multiple instances of XfApplet to run all the Gnome applets you want.
Keep Track of Your Time with Hamster Applet
I recently started a telecommuting job that requires me to log my hours to different projects. I started out using Stopwatch and logging time on a spreadsheet. One drawback of Stopwatch is that it seems to be a bit resource hungry. Not needing millisecond accuracy, I decided to look for something else. Enter the Hamster time tracking applet for Gnome. This is a panel applet for the Gnome desktop environment. If you're using something else as your desktop then you're probably out of luck on this one.
First off; how to install it. I'm going to show you how to install it on Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron). You'll need to add the package sources to your /etc/apt/sources.list file. You can do this by editing the file as root or you can go through the Ubuntu menus. To use the menus go to System -> Administration -> Software Sources. Enter your password at the prompt. Select the Third-Party Software tab and click on Add. Add the following line into the APT line section and click on Add Source.
Now just click Close on the Software Sources dialog and click Reload when the prompt comes up. Once the package sources are reloaded we're ready to install Hamster. Open a terminal and type:
Make sure to say yes when asked to install the package without verification.
You can now add Hamster to your Gnome panel by right clicking on the panel and selecting Add to Panel. Scroll down the list and select Time Tracker and click Add. You should now see an applet that says No Activity on it. Right click on it and select Preferences. From this menu you can add new categories and activities. To delete something, just select it and hit Delete on your keyboard.
Have fun! To learn more about Hamster you can visit the Project Hamster homepage.