First, congratulations on the idea of removing the buttons to minimize / maximize. I got the idea of removing and makes sense with Gnome 3. Sorry to post this as a bug, because I did not find place to post ideas (like IdeaStorm, or even the Ubuntu Brainstorm).

My idea is to integrate the title bar of the panel of Gnome 3. That is, the program title appears in the same place where the icon bar. Where is the title bar now, would the menus of the programs - the close button in the window might be, I believe (I saw something like iTunes, at a glance). The reason for this idea would take a little more vertical space by putting more of any use to the panel and removing an amount of unused space in the windows.

Because it is an idea, not sure exactly how it would affect the event to maximize a window by dragging it to the top. Anyway, it's only an idea. Sorry to post here, and not a more suitable location.

(Sorry for any mistakes in English. I am Brazilian and I'm still learning the new language)