This is pretty handy. I used to have schemes for "Genre\Artist\Album", "Artist\Album" and "Album" -- now "Genre\Artist\Album" replaces all three since you can ignore the left columns if you don't want them.
Matt - that is the best reason yet, never thought of that one, less view schemes to achieve the same goal.
However, a the loss of screen space on the right track area is still a huge loss to me (bigger monitor maybe...)
And like Kambriel said
"So the 'treehuggers' like the simplicity of a tree, but it appears to me that they don't do a whole lot with their libraries. They look for music to play, organize by moving Album groups of files around, but not much more."
I don't know, I import music files (must admit, I like EAC for ripping over MC), tag them and then listen to it. I burn cd's for my car (which is why many of my posts report cd burning issues). I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would want "visualations", but I respect that they do.
But in the end the power of MC is that so many people can do so many different things. With v9.0, I don't have to wade through the featuers I don't use to do what I want to get done. With 9.1, the new panes are in my way to do what I want to get done. Power user features are great when they are optional for the rest of the users that won't want the extra power, and extra key strokes and extra mouse clicks to get the things done.
What has been described so far, are to me, uses way beyond what an "average" user will do. This group of people here are not "average" users. This group is techies, read the "How do you listen to music" and that's obvious. I understand that thread, I'll bet about 1-2% of the average poplulation would understand it. Most people roll their eyes at me when I try to explain MC to them and why it's better than handling the cd's.... Just the thought of connecting a computer to an audio system makes many people sweat. These people will buy MC, but not if it's hard to use right of the box before they evolve into a power user.
I have 2 friends that I've turned on to MC. Both are way more basic users than I am. I'm always on them to "get your tags right... One won't even upgrade to 9.0, too much learning time, when v8 works for him.
The point I'm trying to make, is that I hope MC walks the fine line between feature bloat for the few vs ease of use for the masses. As a software developer myself, I fight that battle with myself all the time. Just one more feature, one more option, one more cool thing, till nobody will use it since reading the helpscrren takes too long to find out how to do the simple things.
I am beginning to see why some users like the panes over the tree. However I still have not found a reason for me to like the panes over the tree for the way I use MC. There is more power in the panes, but if I don't need that power, then to me, it's an annoyance.
Make it more dificult for the average user to use, and they won't use it.
With that all said, I'm still keeping an open mind and working with them as they evolve. I strongly suggest to the MC team that they seriously consider keeping the tree and maybe the panes too. Tree for basic operations, panes for power users. Who is buying MC, what will the average MC user like better? The group of us that make entries here, we are not average MC computer users.