I like those tiny things

Hey there,

with only one exam to go I thought I'd quickly write up another post here, as I won't have time after my exams because of my snowboarding trip to Austria, and I had something to share.
I have a 17 inch flatscreen monitor attached to my computer with a resulotion of 1280 by 1024 pixels. When I bought this piece I found it very big, as before I used 2 15 inch CRT screens to have some screen real estate which used all my precious space on my desk.
Well, after being used to this screen, I still don't find it big enough. So, I thought I'd try to make it look bigger by making everything that's displayed smaller :). Here's what I did and how to do it yourself, making your screen look bigger by making Gnome's widgets smaller:

• Making Gnome-panels smaller:

Right-click on the panel and choose Properties, there you can set the size parameter.

• Making the folders on my desktop and in directories smaller:

Open some folder and open the Edit menu and choose Preferences. On the first tab you can change the standard zoomfactors for iconview and listview. I used 75% for some time but now while writing this I changed it to 50% for both and it seems still very usable for me. Adjust this to your likes.

• Making the Gnome menu's smaller in size:

This one's trickier and involves editing a configuration file. Open the .gtkrc-2.0 file (starting with a dot, it's a hidden file) with the text editor (for example, by pressing Alt-F2, entering "gedit ~/.gtkrc-2.0" in the inputfield and choosing Run) and add a new line like this:
gtk-icon-sizes="panel-menu=16,16:gtk-menu=16,16:gtk-button=16,16:gtk-small-toolbar=16,16:gtk-large-toolbar=24,24:gtk-dialog=32,32:gtk-dnd=32,32"
These are the values I use for different widgets, adjust 'm to your likes. You'll have to re-login for all the changes to be done. (PS: I found about this tip on this website)

• Making Gnome's fonts smaller

Open System > Preferences > Fonts. The applicationss-fonts you can set there will be used on your gnome panels, in all your gnome application's menu's and buttons etc. The desktop-font is the one that is used for the names of files and folders on your desktop and in all directories. making those smaller results in smaller windows and panels. I set mine now to 6;7;6;7;7, which can sound rather small but it's well doable. See what's best for you!

I might have done more tweaks to make my screen look bigger, but I can't think of any now. I'll add 'm when I remember 'm!

See you!