Ubuntu

How can I evenly space icons in an Ubuntu panel?

Asked by Esther Strom

This is a silly, nitpicky little thing, but I have a laptop with a less-than-desirable amount of screen real estate, so it bothers me. I've added a bunch of application launchers to the default panel at the top of my screen (to the right of the Applications/Places/System menus.) The problem is, I can't seem to control the spacing of the icons - I have quite a bit of space available at the right of the panel, and I can drag each individual icon over, but it seems like each icon is attached to its neighbor to the right. So I move one over, and the next one comes with it. Then I move that one, and the one to it's left comes too. The end result is I have several clumps of very-closely-clustered icons, with a lot of space between each clump.

Is there any way to control the spacing automatically? Snap to grid, auto-space, anything? Because my screen is tiny and resolution is pretty high, each icon is very small, and when they're so close together I sometimes end up clicking the wrong one.

I'm running Lucid, and am open to installing things if there's a package that would give me more control over the presentation. I'm also relatively new to Linux, so maybe there's a setting I'm missing somewhere in one of the preferences menus.

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Marc Stewart (marc.stewart) said : 		#1

There isn't an auto-space option that I'm aware of, but I can tell you how I spaced my panel icons before I started using Docky.

I noticed that it was difficult to arrange icons while they were clumped together on the left because small overshoots would re-jig the order, so I first moved them all way over to the right. Then I moved the first one into position on the left, right-clicked it and locked it in place. With its position fixed it became easier to position the second, which I then locked to the panel. I found this one-by-one approach the only way to get them exactly where I wanted.

As I mentioned, I eventually ended up switching to Docky though, which has the advantage of larger (freely sizeable) icons, and it hides when a window occupies the same space, so when I'm concentrating within a single app, my screen is less cluttered (I'm nitpicky too!).

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Esther Strom (esthermstrom-gmail) said : 		#2

Thanks, Mac. I'm interested in Docky - can you tell me more about it? Are you using the standalone, which is apparently still in beta, or the version that comes with the full Do install? Can you configure the size of the dock (i.e. make the icons smaller)?

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Esther Strom (esthermstrom-gmail) said : 		#3

Sorry, Marc - not Mac. My fingers aren't warmed up yet!

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