The tree is how you switch views. We have no plans to add complexity by building another system that duplicates this.
Matt, I do not agree with this!
When in playback mode I like to have the full screen covered with tiles/thumbnails and hide the library tree/action window as they are not needed. But with this full size view it is not possible to switch to view schemes below the main audio/image/video schemes without bringing the tree to the front.
It was there a few releases ago and I found it was a very smart feature, but it disapperead again. I feel one should have all controls available in every possible view. The tile views offer very different approaches on how your selections are done depending on how the panes are set up!
I get the impression that you are flip-flopping all the time around the two extreme positions - allow users to customize as much as possible - don't allow the users to customize anything.
When I bought MC for the first time (it was MJ7), it was because I was highly impressed by the rich set of user customization it offered. But very often I get the impression that you want to kill your best asset besides the excellent database and organizational capacity of MC.
In my eyes you spent too much time on working and reworking the best parts of MC. It had a great interface in MJ8, it got much better with the panes with MC9/MC10 and MC11. Why change the best parts again and again, while some weaker parts could use some uplifting.
The whole development of the MC11.1 interface looked to me more like a trial and error approach rather than a clear design based on specific requirements. This makes the product very instable, as it is always another product. And features come and go and you never know when this happens. I remember that I could watch DVD ripped to disk starting them with a single click about one year ago, something that is not possible for me to do any longer.
Most products I have been using for the last few years hardly changed their interface significantly, but kept adding new features without changing what was already there.