Andrea Azzarone, who's also behind the menu integrated in the window titlebar Unity mockup we've posted last week has created a patch that provides an option to change the Unity launcher ("dock") icon size.
Check out this video featuring his actual code (not a mockup!):
Andrea wants to submit his patch on Launchpad, but unfortunately it looks like there are no plans to make the Unity launcher to be resizable: see this bug report. Further more, Mark Shuttleworth is against it:
Question: "Will the unity Launcher be resizable?" Mark Shuttleworth: 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.
- from AskUbuntu; answer dating back to December 21st
Unfortunately, this seems to be yet another case in which the users will have to use a PPA to get the customization they want (like it is with customizable NotifyOSD). I'm really hoping a for at least a PPA that will provide this patch once Ubuntu 11.04 is out. But who knows, maybe they will reconsider this?
If you want the Unity launcher to get resizable icons, head over to THIS bug report and at the top you should see something like this: "This bug affects 8 people." Click it and select "Yes, it affects me". Like Jack suggest in a comment below, do not spam the bug report with useless comments, only use the "Yes it affects me" method as described above. This does not guarantee in any way that the Unity launcher will allow icon resizing, but it's worth a shot.
Update: it seems the patch will be accepted. See: Unity Launcher Will Support Icon Resizing!
Update: it seems the patch will be accepted. See: Unity Launcher Will Support Icon Resizing!
Note: I couldn't find a link to download the patch for now.
Thanks to Diego Principe for the tip!
via ubuntusecrets.it (in Italian); Ayatana mailing list discussion
via ubuntusecrets.it (in Italian); Ayatana mailing list discussion
