If you want to jump quickly, learn the keyboard shortcuts.
Ok, so that makes two inconvenient ways to navigate.
Also, a minor bug: Keyboard shortcuts don't work with the number pad of the keyboard; only with the number keys above qwerty.
I just figured out how to get almost what I needed. I've always hated MJ's navigation. When I'm deep in a tree, I have to click and scroll to switch to Playlists or another view scheme. The solution would be to keep the category titles on the screen at all times - like on Outlook and others.
Since we're not getting that... I put the icons for Playing Now, Media Library, Playlists, in that order, on the toolbar. And I dragged the toolbar under the menu, above the side panel. With this, I can move around pretty comfortably. The order of the icons and the position of the toolbar makes a big difference since the icons look the same. (See below.)
One request: Switching to Playlists brings the Playlist title to the bottom, leaving the rest of the Playlist section out of view. Can you make it scroll all the way down?
LOT of users would like to see the MJ GUI updated and changed
Yes. And no matter what we do, there will be a LOT of users who would like to change it.
Sounds like a good reason not to improve anything.
Icons
They've been redesigned in both of the last two major releases. And both times, some people love them and some don't.
Really? Are there real users who have said that they love the icons?
I think the main problem is that they look the same. They're either orange or aqua. The purpose of icons is to give the brain a shortcut by not having to read words. Using different colors make the icons more useful.
Using 16 bits instead of 8 bits (it looks like 3 bits, actually) and doubling or tripling the size of the icons would help make MJ look more XP than 95.
Would it be hard to break out the icons into separate files that could be replaced? I'd suggest putting them in the skins folder.