I fully understand that this is not a gnome list; however, the 
implementation of gnome on SL 7 is the question.

I am attempting to add four things to the default Gnome classic on SL 7 
as shipped:

1.  a workspace grid on the lower panel; I have added frippery to the 
default and this brings back a lower panel with a 1/N (N=9 in my 
instance) workspace indicator, but no grid (matrix);  I have added gnome 
tweak tool that now appears in the gnome pull down menu, Applications -> 
Utilities, that was need to activate the functionalities of frippery

URL -- http://intgat.tigress.co.uk/rmy/extensions/index.html

2.  The ability to add things to the upper panel as one had in SL 6 gnome

3.  The ability to (right?) click on the desktop and add applications

4.  The ability to select items from the pull down Applications menu to 
put on the desktop (or panel) -- I have added alacarte and thus now have 
Applications -> Sundry -> main menu and have some small control over the 
menu

Any suggestions as to how to accomplish these in SL 7 gnome?

There is a URL with instructions using a text editor on specific files:

https://developer.gnome.org/integration-guide/stable/desktop-files.html.en

Does the above actually work on SL 7 or is there a systems directory 
instead that overwrites the user files and thus must be modified?

I am considering mate as a replacement for gnome, but it is unclear how 
stable and supported mate will be.  I have experimented with the KDE 
plasma that is part of the SL 7, but this seems to have the same issues 
as gnome and others as well.

Yasha Karant