Inconsistent behaviour of menus

[Alexander Volovics]

If you click on 'Applications', 'Places' or 'System' on the panel
you can, seemingly at random, get:

- the full menu
- a truncated menu with scroll arrows

The same goes when clicking on the menu entries.

I find this behaviour irritating and would very much like to
get the full menu every time.

Does anybody know why this happens and if it is possible to 
configure this somewhere?

Alexander