Comment 89 for bug 668415

OK, practical problem: Lots of applications have a slender panel down the left hand side, e.g. Nautilus (the panel containing drives and shortcuts) and Epiphany (the panel containing folders). Dragging files or mail respectively towards that panel causes the unity launcher bar to pop out, obscuring the panel and severely degrading the useability of said apps in fullscreen mode. If the launcher bar must be on the left, for the sake of compatibility with said apps it must not pop out when dragging files, at least not as readily as it does now.

Personally I don't see why keeping the launcher bar and the ubuntu button close together means that the bar cannot be moved. Just move the button with the bar. However I'd understand it if you wanted to concentrate on getting core functionality working first. Unity is quite flaky at the moment, to put it mildly. Not a good time to be working on options. But sometime the option would be nice.