It bothered me a bit at first too, but it wore off fairly quickly for me at least.

The additional feedback that you get with the dot right under your mouse turning on and off becomes pretty reinforcing after a while I think...

Then also being able to use the same area to tag items as selection filters is pretty cool, that allows the regular scene browser to be the filter UI mechanism instead of needing some big additional filter manager dialog or something like that.

- Michael