Gnome Panel should allow resizing smaller than 23 pixels.

[Chris Lasher]

Binary package hint: gnome-panel

Currently, GNOME panel cannot be resized to be smaller than 23 pixels in height. Many users desire a much smaller panel, both from an aesthetic and a usability point of view. With today's netbooks, the need to be economical with screen real estate becomes all the more critical. Given that Mark Shuttleworth states that netbooks are a central aim for upcoming releases (https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2009-February/000536.html), it is in line with Ubuntu's interests to improve the GNOME panel for smaller screen sizes.

Questions that must be addressed:
* What is actually preventing GNOME panel from being set to a smaller size? Icons? Text?
* If it's icons, what steps can Ubuntu make toward providing more scaleable icons for its themes?
* If it's text, can there be integration between the panel resize dialog and necessary adjustments to font sizes for the GNOME desktop?

See also Bug #223075.

[coCoKNIght (cocoknight)]

By changing the font sizes in system->preferences->appearance->fonts you can make the panels smaller, however there's a bug with the main menu that prevents scaling of the ubuntu logo icon in the main menu. The only way to make a panel with a main menu smaller is by disabling the optoin "show icons in menus" which you can find in the interface tab of "appearance preferences". This is what I did, on my 1024x600 HP Mini I don't really feel like I have another choice... would love to see those icons again though...

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

thank you for your bug report, that seems to be an upstream choice and should be sent to bugzilla.gnome.org

[coCoKNIght (cocoknight)]

Note that this problem doesn't occur any more since 10.04 I believe. I'm running 10.10 atm and the panel resizes as would be expected.

[coCoKNIght (cocoknight)]

Please ignore my previous comment, this is still an issue in 10.04 and 10.10
I forgot that I'm not using the default menu bar anymore, instead I'm using the "main menu" (the one with only the ubuntu logo). Sorry for the mistake.