Comment 37 for bug 765819

Please keep in mind that this is not just a problem of particular programs like Firefox or Chrome. E.g. when using a regular terminal in full screen mode, it is impossible to mark lines for copy/paste if you want to mark them from the leftmost column.

I never understood what sense this unity launcher makes (except for trying to mimic MacOS). Gnome 2's mechnism was much better. BTW, I find those icons in unity launcher too large, and the animations (where the icons are continuously moving up and down) annoying.

What exactly was the design criterion to move icons to the left and not leave them as small icons on top?

A simple solution might be to move the launcher to the right instead of the left window side, which seems to be less important. Furthermore, a toolbar at the left side is not really ergonomic, since most people are right handers and thus prefer buttons, handles etc. on the right side.

After all, in my eyes this unity launcher bar is not much of a good design. It's rather an attempt to look like a Mac. I'd prefer a desktop looking like Linux.