On my netbook with a small screen i dont have many problems but with older
distros you can right click it and set the properties to autohide or enable
hide and reveal buttons on the left of the screen.

One of the big problems with Unity, IMO, is that right-clicking does not
give you many options, if any. Mouse-over does more in most cases and Unity
is locked down. The way to change anything is through Compiz settings and
not through right-click and drop down menu. GNOME 3 is similarly
challenged. I like KDE's netbook interface much better. And there you can
right-click and can change just about anything.

On gnome I didn't have a problem hiding the top bar only the unity 2D.
The compiz customizing add-on failed to appear when installed. guess it
is only for Unity 3d. Maybe I need to look harder for a different ubuntu
release made for netbooks like releases before 10.04 I think that unity
would work great for new users but I have to say without an answer to
this I will not install on anything new.

Unity 2D is customized differently. It uses Metacity. You need to install
gconf-editor and load it then find what you want.