Hi Martin
If everything is closed its seems an extra effort to have to mouseover to open it to get to a tool every time you need one.

Why don't you just leave the main ones open in their default states and move the browser to the opposite side of the screen
Then they are open and exactly where you expect them and you only have to tab to the other options such as between construct and transform etc.

The only thing I would like changed is the View and Select tabs only have 1 row of icons each and the Edit has three rows.
when moving between Edit to using view or select the border box resizes and the whole column below is moved up and down moving the icon positions of construct and transform and the browser area.

I find this more of a bug bear as you get used to the spot they are in and they end up in a different place depending on above.

Michael have you considered combining View and Select into one Tab next to Edit and possibly putting align in there also.

Personally I use keyboard shortcuts for almost every command which is very fast compared to using the icons.

cheers
shayne