Ok, first I'll start from the beginning before I get all mixed up. I always been interested on saving vertical space as I own a 12" netbook. I already made some reference on saving vertical space with Firefox on this post. This post is more like a sum of different post I seen and I adopted what I thought it suited my needs. Of course everyone is going to make their own version of it, but for what it's worth here is mine.
- 1.- For start I remove the bottom panel in Ubuntu only using the top panel to display everything I need. This is great for saving vertical space but at the same time it leads to some compromises of the amount of things you can display on the top panel.
- 2.- Removing the date/temperature from been always visible on the top panel may save you some horizontal space for displaying other things but of course this is more of a personal choise, some people may want to have those visible all the time.
- 3.- We will need to switch between windows, add to the panel the window list. I also use this to see the window title. I know there are other applications that will show the window title like window title and namebar applets (more about that on this post) but like I said I'm doing my own version. And I don't think there is a need for window title when is already displayed in the window list and I think this is enough at least for me.
- 4.- Next step is to remove the window title and add some buttons to the panel for maximized windows, and there is a little application that those all that. The easiest way to install it is through this PPA, in this PPA there are also namebar and window title that I already mention. Just install the gnome-window-applets and then add the window buttons to the panel. I added mine to the very left of the panel to keep with the consistency Ubuntu look. Here is the Ambience theme for the window button applet that I got from this post.
- To have the window buttons work with Chromium I recommend setting the "use system title bar and borders" option in chromium and the setting from window button will take care of the rest.
- Make sure you check the option "Hide compiz decorations for maximzed windows" under preferences, behaviors tab in the window buttons applet.
- 5.- And my last tip would be to remove the Ubuntu menu and install the LinuxMint main menu instead. You can install it from the webupd8 PPA which I already posted about. The LinuxMint main menu will save you horizontal space for displaying all the things we need to display and it's a great menu. I got my icon from "/usr/share/icons/ubuntu-mono-dark/actions/16" folder.
- ***EDIT*** 6.- I'm just going to add one more tip here about saving horizontal space by removing you name from the memenu by typing this on the terminal:
gconftool -s /system/indicator/me/display --type int 0
You also edit it by typing "gconf-editor" into the terminal and then going to "system->indicator->me" and changing the display value to "0".
The valid values are:
0 - No name 1 - with name 2 - default
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