Comment 1 for bug 360717

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...