Hi Jesse,

> <....> .or flyout menus for a 2nd tier of advanced tools,

I'm thinking it will probably end up with something like this eventually, some kind of "Tools" popup menu where I can stick a bunch of less commonly used stuff without it making a big impact on the top level UI.

I've thought a little bit about having a "More..." button inside of some palettes that could be used for this.

It's a little clumsy but for tools that you don't need to access very frequently it is ok for them to be in a more clumsy location. It's the frequently used tools that have to remain more uncluttered and available at the very top level.

I'm not really leaning so much towards an Advanced UI / Basic UI switch, because even if you need to do some "Advanced" things it doesn't mean that you don't need to do a lot of more basic things more frequently anyway. So having less clutter is still really valuable even for "Advanced"...

But it will take a while to experiment with different ideas to come up with a good one. Usually I will have to make prototypes and try a few different ways before settling in on a good method. It is always surprising how much work it takes to make a "simple" UI for things.

- Michael