One of the neat things about cardapio is its ability to be resized. Perhaps this could solve both problems of being to large or small. After stretching to a certain size the icons enlarge and a lock (desktop) icon could appear. On the other end, shrinking it past the minimum icon size limit would begin to hide the places list, followed by everything else�until�all you have left is a search box like gnome-do.
People are great at�pattern�recognition, hence icons > text... ios, hunting & gathering etc.