In maverick, and I belive many old ubuntus, one could zoom in and out by holding super and scrolling with the mouse, but that doesn't work in Natty. How do you activate that again?
Ubuntu – How to activate super+scroll to zoom
11.04compizzooming
Related Solutions
Under Edit → Preferences → Plugins, you can tick the Text Size box and zoom in with ctrl++.
Click on gedit-plugins
to install the Gedit plugins.
You can also manually download/install the plugin.
ctrl+Trackpad scroll (up/down) enables you, to zoom in and out as well, not only within gEdit, but also in your Webbrowser, File System etc.
Both possibilities work just fine in Ubuntu 11.10.
Update information for Ubuntu 17.x.x, 18.x.x and later, as suggested by code_dredd - tested and works:
sudo apt-get install -y gedit-plugin-text-size
1) Install Compiz-Settings-Manager (sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager),
2) Go to "Ubuntu Unity Plugin" > "Experimental" and uncheck "Enable Shortcuts Hint Overlay".
Best Answer
First of all you need to install CompizConfig Settings Manager from the Software Centre. Once you've done that then launch it, and find the Enhanced Zoom Desktop plugin.
Here you need to enable the Zoom In and Zoom Out mouse shortcuts. To get the same behaviour as in 10.10 then set Zoom In to Button4 and Zoom Out to Button5.
Be aware that the Unity panel and launcher are not zoomable (this is probably why this functionality was disabled by default). Also the panel shadow may get in the way.