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Every respected dock out there (docky, awn, cairo dock) has these 2 important features that I really consider a must:

  1. The ability to re-size them (someone may like smaller or bigger icons than the default ones)
  2. The ability to change their position (bottom, left, right)

In Unity (which let's face it, is a dock) I heard that it will not be possible even in the long run to have these features implemented.

In my opinion Ubuntu is reinventing the wheel here, because so far Unity doesn't offer a thing more than, for example docky (they are offering even less) and they are doing it the wrong way by not including some simple and very necessary options that I think everybody wants, that's why they are present in the other docks.

In Mac OS X, the Apple logo is in the left, the min, max, close buttons are on the left, but still you can resize and position your dock wherever you want.

So again, my question is:
Is there any really plausible explanation why unity will not include these simple features?

1 Answer 1

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Question 1

Mark Shuttleworth answered a question on this topic on this very site:

No, the size and position of the Unity launcher are fixed. In future, they should respond to information we can discern on your preferred font sizes and screen size/resolution, but that's for a future date.

It's unclear whether it will at a point in the future be possible to change the size of the launcher manually.

Question 2

This feature request was reported as a bug recently, but the request was declined.

Mark Shuttleworth answered:

I'm afraid that won't work with our broader design goals, so we won't implement that. We want the launcher always close to the Ubuntu button.

See also: OMG Ubuntu - Ubuntu Unity launcher won’t be ‘moveable’

Sidenote

The Canonical Design Blog talks about why the Unity Launcher is not considered to be a Dock. One reason for this is the 'accordion' effect for large numbers of launchers - in a convential dock the launchers would just get smaller and smaller.

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    Am I the only one finding that a bit of a silly reason to not call something a dock? The way it handles overflow? :| Jan 29, 2011 at 20:00
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    Attention Mr Shuttleworth - "If it looks like a dock, sits like a dock, and clicks like a dock, then it probably is a dock." -- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_test Feb 18, 2011 at 7:11
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    Its a Dock ATM. Feb 18, 2011 at 8:13

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