Hi Will, definitely these are great ideas, I know the lack of error or just feedback in general is a problem.

I haven't quite figured out a particularly nice unobtrusive way to handle it yet, it will probably take some experimenting with a variety of methods, that's why it hasn't made it into V1. Just like you mentioned, something that whapped you in the face too much would get annoying.

One thing I have thought about is a text box in the lower-right corner of the screen, possibly even a bit wider than the side pane (imagine the Options and Help buttons sliding over to the left a bit for that).

One problem is that is can be difficult to phrase error messages or feedback with only a few words, I often times have problems with trying to squeeze very much text into just the width of the side pane... Streaming messages down to the bottom-right corner would be pretty unobtrusive, but maybe _too_ unobtrusive...

- Michael