shell on small (netbook) screens

[Alex Anthony <dreamaster28991 aol com>]

Before I start, can I say very well done. I'm using shell full time at
the moment and its definitely going in the right direction.

I'm running it on a netbook with a 8.9 inch screen and theres a couple
of places where shell could be better for this screen size:

The panel and activities overlay should follow gnome font sizes. I have
them set quite small (8 points) and it would be nice if everything would
follow this so that I'd have that little bit of extra space.

There's a little patch below the recent documents in the activities menu
that is always blank (see
http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/2079/screenshotnh.png) This seems
strange and when I have more than 4 apps running or favourited, I only
see my most recent 4 documents. Not very useful. I know I can show more,
but this adds a click.

Couple of points less specific to small screens.  Are there going to be
more mouseover highlights added? such as to the Activities button or the
+ workspace button? I notice that it has been added to activities
buttons since shell 2.28.

Also, adding gnome-do style relevancy to the activities search would be
great. At the moment, if I type system monitor, I have to click
preferences (on Ubuntu) and its still the 7th option.

Alex