Why don't you just use the fullscreen feature then?

wow ur really intelligent, i wish god made me as smart as you.
now all u have to do is add fullscreen support for every application in the world.
but since ur so good to me, u just have to do the ones i use.
Nautilus
Evolution
Amarok
GAIM
Gimp
Inkscape
OpenOffice
Gnome-Terminal
F-Spot
gethereal
Anjuta IDE
Glade
Banshee
Yumex

ill send u another 14 apps when ur done with that.
Genius, true genius

by the way, there is no address bar in firefox fullscreen mode, and no direction buttons.

(In reply to comment #2)
Your comment is totally inappropriate for bugzilla.  Please take some time to
read https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html.

Since you are unaware of the fullscreening capabilities of Gnome: Go to
Desktop->Preferences->Keyboard Shortcuts, set the "Toggle fullscreen mode" to
some keybinding, and then when any of those apps you listed are in focus just
press the keybinding you chose.  Just because the app doesn't know how to put
itself into fullscreen mode doesn't mean Gnome doesn't know how to do it to the
application.  :-)  (It may also be of interest to you that at least some of the
apps you listed *do* know how to put themselves into fullscreen mode these
days, e.g. gnome-terminal has such an option exposed in its interface)

ok sorry man, 
im always grouchy in the morning.

i dont want that. 

i want to see metacity when in fullscreen.
I bet it would be really simple to add this feature.

What do you mean by seeing metacity?  metacity doesn't show any windows most the time (only in special cases, e.g. when you try to close an app and it doesn't respond for several seconds, or when you press alt-tab -- but in both those cases the window ought to appear on top anyway).

perhaps, my term is incorrect.
I want to see the blue window border at the top of the window.
common man, why do i need to keep putting an app into fullscreen mode, then taking it off, it would simple, if there was option for it to cover the panel altogether

Not quite; making the panel be below (or even at the same level as) other windows when the two overlap wouldn't actually be relevant in the 'maximization' case, because metacity would still make sure that maximized windows do not overlap with the panels.

You could get the behavior you described by changing the window type on the panel from _NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE_DOCK to _NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE_NORMAL and removing the _NET_WM_STRUT and _NET_WM_STRUT_PARTIAL properties on the panel window.  You could use the devilspie program (third party add-on) to do that.  If I were a maintainer or developer of gnome-panel, I'd just point you in that direction as I don't think this is a useful general purpose option to include in gnome-panel itself.  But I'm not, so I'll leave this open for one of them to comment.

Hope that helps...  :)

i still think its a good idea,
anyways, lets see wat happens,

something interesting to note, when i run xcompmgr, with x-composite, the feature i am requesting, begins to happen,

(In reply to comment #9)
> something interesting to note, when i run xcompmgr, with x-composite, the
> feature i am requesting, begins to happen,

That's considered a bug in the composite extension in your version of Xorg: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2005-October/010679.html

(In reply to comment #9)
> i still think its a good idea,

Can you explain why? I fail to see the use case here. (and the way Elijah pointed out is better IMHO)

Why does gnome keep two panels? One on the top and one on the bottom. It only reduces the screen sixe on a desktop by a further 25ish pixels. 

So on a gnome desktop running on a standard 15" Screen at 1024x768 looses a total of 50pixels to the panels, which in result gives the applications a screen size of 1024x718. And dont forget to remove a few more pixels for the window border.
Hence we have the fullscreen feature.

However this is no more advantages then keeping the two panels in the first place. 

Allowing other applications to cover the panel(s) allows the user to cover his/her entire desktop without the need of constantly putting and and taking off an application into fullscreen mode.

Windows was capable of doing this simple task sice '95. 

If you guys are too busy with bug hunting then its alright, I can live without this feature as long as you guys fix all the other panel problems, one of which always pisses me off, "Lock to Panel" this button is a dud on my gnome. Every reboot the applets come alive and walkaround and sit with who they like, no matter how i position and lock them. So if you guys could fix that, it would be better than the feature addidtion.

The default panel layout is a separate issue. If it takes too much space (which I agree can be the case), the user should just change it.

Have you considered using auto-hide panels? It sounds like it would really help in your case. This feature and fullscreen makes it hard for me to see your proposed change useful, especially since I feel this would confuse users (or this could be made an option, but I don't want to add an option for every behavior out there).

(of course, we're also busy with bug hunting: there are lots of bugs, and not enough time to fix them all ;-))

the auto-hide feature confuses applications when it wants to maximise, but anyways. you guys are the pros, im just a user. 
Goodluch bug hunting.

(In reply to comment #14)
> the auto-hide feature confuses applications when it wants to maximise

It works well here. What's the issue you're seeing?

i dont know, for some reason the size of the application changes, sometimes when i maximise, it is under the panel and sometimes it covers the panel.

I dont think this feature is needed. I think i will get garnome and build myself a new gnome and help with the bug hunt.

(In reply to comment #16)
> I dont think this feature is needed.

Since everyone agrees, let's close.

I ask for this feature request to be re-opened. 

This may partly be due to changed circumstances since it was first discussed. It is getting increasingly popular to run applets in a 'desklet' paradigm, as if they were running directly on top of the desktop. This rather simple feature request gives gnome-panel similar functionality, within a user-interface that is already familiar to the user.

I can identify at least three relevant use cases:

A. As originally discussed in this thread: User just want a panel that does not eat screen-estate while working with non-fullscreen windows. 

B. User wants to run some gnome-panel applets in a 'desklet' paradigm: I.e., interactive applets 'on top of desktop'. A (possibly transparent) gnome-panel that stays below other windows fulfill this need. A workaround could be to run another applet engine (such as gdesklets), but some gnome-panel applets are significantly more polished than their 'desklet' equivalents. 

C. User wants to run a 'dock'-type application (e.g. Avant Window Manager) on top of the bottom gnome-panel. However, user wants to keep gnome-panel because there are gnome-panel applets that fulfill needs the 'dock' does not cover. (AWN on top of transparent gnome-panel with a few smaller icons towards the screen corners actually looks very nice.)

Google gives a handful examples of users asking for this functionality, and that there are patches 'in the wild':

  1. http://www.mail-archive.com/desktop-devel-list@gnome.org/msg10164.html
  2. http://www.planetblur.org/hosted/awnforum/index.php?shard=forum&action=g_reply&ID=390&page=1&isLive=true
  3. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=521881
  4. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=195591

Hence, I request the feature to be reconsidered either as a checkbox in the panel property dialog 'Stay below windows', or at least as a gconf switch. But, in fact, I agree with link 3 above: the ability to keep panels on screen without obscuring other windows make more sense in the UI than a separate option for 'Arrows on hide buttons' (Or, actually, in my opinion, even more sense than the whole rather confusing 'manual hiding' functionality implemented through 'Show hide buttons'.)