Adding pidgin icon to gnome-shell status tray

While it's a great interface to the system, one thing I miss with the new gnome-shell (now being shipped by default with Fedora 15) is a system-tray status icon for Pidgin, my preferred IM and IRC client.

The current graphical notification, residing in the messages/notification area, doesn't quite cut it as that area auto-disappears and as I would like some persistently on the screen at all times, continuously flashing until I respond if I get a new message. I'm sure I could turn off the auto-disappearing feature, but I like that functionality the way it is.

Fortunately adding the icon back to the system status area in the upper right is trivial. Simply create the following directory

~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/pidgin.status@gnome-shell.morsi.org

Then copy these two files in there

metadata.json

{
  "shell-version": ["3.0.2"], 
  "uuid": "pidgin.status@gnome-shell.morsi.org", 
  "name": "Pidgin Status Icon", 
  "description": "Integrates Pidgin Messaging Client into the status bar"
}

extension.js

// Creates a system status notification icon for pidgin

const StatusIconDispatcher = imports.ui.statusIconDispatcher;

// gnome-shell extension entry point
function main() {
    StatusIconDispatcher.STANDARD_TRAY_ICON_IMPLEMENTATIONS['pidgin'] = 'pidgin';
}

Then simply restart gnome-shell by pressing alt-f2 and typing r and hitting enter. Now you should see the Pidgin icon in the upper right!