How to add a program to the applications menu?

[Chris G]

On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 03:42:54PM +0530, Charles wrote:
> On 12/07/11 15:30, xfce-request at xfce.org wrote:
> > Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2011 16:44:49 +0100
> > From: Chris G <cl at isbd.net>
> > To: xfce at xfce.org
> > Subject: How to add a program to the applications menu?
> > Message-ID: <20110711154449.GA3203 at chris>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> >
> > I have just installed the (UK) Inland Revenue "Basic PAYE Tools" on my
> > xubuntu 10.10 system, it works well and much faster than the Windows
> > version did in VirtualBox.
> >
> > However it has sullied my desktop by sticking an icon there and anyway
> > it's often hidden because I don't believe the desktop is the place for
> > starting programs from.
> >
> > It hasn't installed itself in any of the menus, is there any reasonably
> > straightforward way of making custom additions to the program menus?  Or
> > is the only way to install something somewhere down in /etc/xdg/menus?
> >
> > -- Chris Green
> Hello Chris :-)
> 
> Info athttp://wiki.xfce.org/howto/customize-menu
> 
Thanks, though that does (to me) seem to make it rather more complicated
than it really is.

Basically all I needed to do was to go to /home/chris/.local/share/applications 
and create a xxx.desktop file using one of the existing ones as a template.

-- 
Chris Green