At Bryce Harrington's request, I'm opening this as a bug.
The monitor resolution dialog panel can be too big to easily fit on a 640x480 screen, especially if the DPI is wrong and the dialog fonts are huge. The "Apply" button can end up off the screen or below the usual bottom Gnome panel. The user would have to know that Alt-A will select Apply, or tab blindly, or know to add/use the hide buttons on the Gnome panels. Most of the panel area is taken up by the representation of the screen size/shape.
Possible fixes are:
a) make the screen size/shape area more compact
b) move the screen size/shape area
c) make the pull-down/button area more compact, and/or move it to the right of the screen area
d) make the dialog screen-size aware, and omit the screen size/shape area if necessary
e) make the dialog scrollable?
f) make the dialog appear always-on-top, and on top of the top/bottom panels, and open by default in the top left corner of the visible screen
Thanks.
forgot to assign to Bryce Harrington