[Usability] Why a Resize Gripper on GTKStatusbar but not GnomeAppBar?

[Steven Garrity <stevelist silverorange com>]

I've been trying to find out a bit about why/when Gnome 
applications/windows should have a window resize gripper (the little 
widget in the bottom right of GEdit and Nautilus windows).

What first got me wondering was Firefox - should their GTK2 build have a 
resize-grabber [1]?

Then, I got involved in the Gnome Outliner project [2]. I see that 
GtkStatusbar automatically includes a resize-gripper, but GnomeAppBar 
does not.

Havoc Pennington's "GTK+ / Gnome Application Development" has the 
following to say about GtkStatusbar vs. GnomeAppBar [3]:

> There's no real reason to prefer GnomeAppBar or GtkStatusbar; they
> simply have different APIs. The GnomeAppBar widget was written
> later, with several goals in mind:
>  - To simplify the GtkStatusbar API.
>  - To support an optional progress bar next to the status bar,
>    similar to Netscape's.
>  - Eventual support for "interactive" use in the tradition of the
>    Emacs "minibuffer." This is unfinished in Gnome 1.0, however.

The reference to Gnome 1.0 being "unfinished" obvious dates that source. 
Can anyone confirm if this is still relevant?

My question is this: Should GnomeAppBar have a resize-gripper?

Many key applications already have the gripper (presumably by using 
GtkStatusBar instead of GnomeAppBar), including GEdit, Nautilus, and 
Totem. The gripper provides a nice large clickable area for resizing 
windows and a visual indication that the window is indeed resizable. 
Including it in GnomeAppBar could be nice improvement to many applications.

Thanks,
Steven Garrity

[1] http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=244787
[2] http://gnomeoutliner.sourceforge.net/
[3] http://www.gnome.cl/~hugo/ggad/z91.html