There are, however, a number of common tasks related to menu items that do not vary across distributions, and we'll describe those here. First, there are context menus for individual menu items. To see them, right-click on a menu item (this is easier if you do not keep the left mouse button pressed while navigating your menus). The possible actions are:

Add this launcher to panel

Add the item as a launcher in the panel. If you have more than one panel, the launcher will be added to the first panel. You can then drag the launcher to wherever you actually want it.

Put into run dialog

Display this item as a shortcut in the Run Program dialog.

Entire menu

The two items here, "Add this as menu to panel" and "Add this as drawer to panel," allow you to add the entire submenu containing the launcher to your panel as either a drawer (a portion of panel that stays open when a menu might close) or as a menu.

The menu customization tools are one of the simplest and most obvious improvements in the GNOME 2 platform. To alter your menus, just open your Nautilus file manager and type "applications:///" into the location bar. The Applications display represents your menus and submenus as folders, with item launchers in them. Drag items around and move, copy, delete, or rename them as you see fit.

To add a submenu, right-click in an empty spot in the folder and select New Folder, then rename the folder, or right-click on it to set its name and icon.