having trouble in restoring gnome-panel

["Payal Sarmukadam" <p sarmukadam gmail com>]

Hi,
     I have accidently lost my Gnome-panels, i mean top & bottom panels. The top panel used to show the workspaces & the bottom panel used to show the icons for applications that i open. e.g., Terminal, browser,text editors etc.. 
   After both the panels disappeared, I opened a new terminal & used gnome-panel command. That helped me getting the top panel & also the bottom panel. However, I am not able to see the icons on the bottom panel the way i used to see earlier. I mean the bottom panel is totally empty & when I minimize any window like a text editor window, I don't see the icon for the same on the panel & I need to retrieve the desired window by alt+tab. 
   I am new to this gnome environment , & need help to restore the settings which I have accidently lost.

Thanks,
Payal