I don't think the designers wanted this to be allowed by default. Maybe as an extension, if it doesn't exist already?

Hey Carlo, thanks for the bug report. The panel is intended to be both unobstrusive and a visual anchor (particularly important when you move in and out of the overview). Also, you can full screen an application if you want it to use the whole screen. So this doesn't seem necessary, and it would go against some of the high level goals for the panel.

No reason it could be an extension though.

In the last years all browsers have gone in the direction of reserving as much space as possible for the user. 

I'm running Debian on my laptop which hasn't such a huge screen and I can appreciate the availability of even those few millimeters reserved by the panel. 

So I think the panel should have the autohiding option. 

Of course it can be an extension. There is such an extension out there on the internet running on gnome 3.0 and now I made it run myself on gnome 3.2, so personally I'm quite satisfied: it was just a suggestion.

Mobile phones are an interesting reference point here. Obviously they have very small screens, but they still always display their top panel except when doing something full screen like watching a video.

The reasons they do this are the same for us:

 * To tightly bind the top panel with the status of the device, so that the top panel becomes a concrete part of the system.

 * To enable users to orientate themselves. The top panel indicates which way up the device is, but also provides a consistent visual reference point.

Giovanni, maybe you'll want to add such an extension to gnome-shell-extensions? Or close the bug if you don't.

Carlo, could you give us a pointer to that extension's website?

http://www.webupd8.org/2011/06/autohide-top-bar-gnome-shell-extension.html

It worked on gnome 3.0, I posted a comment with a modified version for gnome 3.2 which changed the main boxes in the panel (leftBox, leftCorner... etc...) so the extension didn't work anymore.

Carlo.

Thanks for the bug report. This particular bug has already been reported into our bug tracking system, but please feel free to report any further bugs you find.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 643662 ***