Add custom application launcher in Fedora 16/Gnome 3

The application launchers that appear when you bring up the Activities Overview when pressing the windows button, can be customized by adding or modifying desktop entry files.

There are two places where you can add new desktop entry files depending on whether the launcher icon should be available for all users or only a single user.

For example, to create a launcher for the eclipse IDE:

Global (all users) -
/usr/share/applications/eclipse.desktop

Local (single user) -
/home/myusername/.local/share/applications/eclipse.desktop

Assuming that eclipse is installed to /opt/eclipse, the eclipse.desktop file would look something like this:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=eclipse
Type=Application
Categories=Development
Exec=/opt/eclipse/eclipse
Icon=/opt/eclipse/icon.xpm
Terminal=false

Hope this helps!