Allow unity launcher to be resizable

This bug is awaiting design feedback before progress can be made. Confirming that there is a question to be answered. Will be marked triage when design gives a suitable direction forward.

Andrea Azzarone wrote a patch for this: https://lists.launchpad.net/ayatana/msg04874.html

I think this is an important feature to have...

Andrea's video demonstration of the patch above:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJH3Tmuc4TE

personally, I double-plus like this solution. It's a step towards a pixel-count independent display. Pixels counts increase (DPI) but fingers don't get smaller (unless you delegate operation of the machine to your kids).

From a personal and technical point-of-view I like it even more, because it should help against hardcode-itis setting in with the Unity code. Eg. a unit test that constantly scrubs the icon size up and down (not just to 32x32 pixels, but all the way to zero) is likely a good stress test.

This is a must have.

Looks great! Thanks Andrea, let's get it into review and landing.

Look to this: https://code.launchpad.net/~arlecchino92/unity/change_icon_size/+merge/50592

I like that both the launcher and the Ubuntu button are scaled, it looks very consistent.

The patch sounds nice. There are probably a few things to change with the private attribute being commented out, but the quick proof of concept is great: thanks a lot for making this patch!

@Jason: can you take a look at the this week and try to land it for Thursday?

Marck was quick =D. hope to see it in unity, a nice effect

I'm concerned how this is gonna work with progress bar, count and emblems. I see from the branch log that the progress bar is handled, that's great Andrea :-D

Emblems can probably also be handled fairly gracefully without too much fuzz, but I'm more concerned about scaling up the counter without having it look too goofy..?

setting the design task as fix released as per mark's comment

Does anyone know why the 32px min limit? It's too large for smaller screens.

The main reason is because below 32 px, progress bar and counter appear wrong!

Thanks Andrea.
Is there anything in the works to go lower? It would still look good on smaller screen laptops at 24px or even lower.
You guys are doing a great job, Unity is super cool, just got to get over the learning curve.

No, 32px is the minimum!

I'd rather have smaller icons even if some things look wrong. I'm ok if the main resize frontend does not allow you to set it lower, but at least allow others like gconf and ubuntu teak to make it smaller with a warning.

Icon and window resizing:
One of the attractive features of Linux is the ability to not be LOCKED into the limitations of "The Microsoft/Apple" mentality. Being able to not have the Desktop cluttered by HUGE Icons (we call them Idiot-Cons) is one of those features. Also the ability to resize, Reorder and reorganize the menus and the sizes of whatever we open is another important feature of the Linux experience. Gnome allowed this freedom and all of my clients (my self included) loved it.
Example: when posting this comment I needed to open two copies of Firefox next to each other (not "Tabbed") to allow viewing two (overlapped) web sites. This was a difficult task to do and Unity repeatedly attempted to force each Firefox window to occupy the entire screen over the other. "Tabs" are not a desirable feature.
On a few computers I have setup there is more than one screen but these are an exception!
If Unity is going to attempt to imitate the Microsoft/Apple mentality then Unity will be a giant step backwards for the Linux community.

Just remember the "old Eskimo" saying: "If you are not the lead dog, the scenery never changes!"
Is it the plan to follow the Microsoft/Apple "butts" down the road?
Is that the "view" (LOL) you want for Unity?
I hope not!

Until Unity has better customization abilities I will be moving everyone's desktop over to the "Classic" version and if that becomes unavailable then I will move everyone over to a different Distro!

Remember, we call them Idiot-Cons for a reason!
Thank you for an otherwise (for now) excellent program.