Refreshing the panel in gnome2

[Smooth]

This is a pretty stupid question... It's more of a nuissance than a problem, but here it goes:

Does anybody know how to have the gnome-panel refresh itself or something without having to kill it? Whenever I emerge a new app, or whenever I create a .desktop file, the panel won't show it (not even after I restart my session, my computer... not even turning it off and back on) unless i kill the gnome-panel process. After I kill it and a new gnome-panel process starts again, then it shows. Kinda weird. Any help'd be appreciated.

Thanks,

Smooth