is definitily not an improvement.
Longer paths, smaller buttons and the possibility to hide the collection browser is lost.

The new overall design on the other side with the possibility to rearrange the the different parts looks very promising. Is the possibility to have a gimp like layout intended?

Well, I think before using 2.2-SVN you should follow the mailing list, as we have clearly stated that it will eat your kittens....

FYI, 2.2 trunk is open since less than 3 days and with almost 300 commits within 24 hours it is most likely to break a lot of things. Did I mention that 2.2-SVN does not accept bug reports for now because of the above statements?

If you really want to follow development closely, you should read the mailing list and linger in #amarok on irc.freenode.net