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In Amarok 2.2 trunk, there have been two huge changes in the interface (as of the last screencast). One is that the browser, which currently houses the collection, internet, playlists, and files tabs has switched to a dolphin-style breadcrumb navigation. The second is that the various elements, the browser, context area, playlist, even the controls, can now be moved around like the panels in dolphin*. For those who are not familiar, take a look at their latest screencast Here. The relevant bits are the beginning and end. Alternatively you can look at this video, which deals only with the breadcrumb navigation, and this video, which deals only with the dockable ui elements (despite what the latter says, this apparently is now officially in Amarok 2.2).

I personally think both changes are great. The problem arises when you drop one elements on another (like you see in the video where they drop the context view on the browser). You now have a pair of tabs stacked on top of the breadcrumb-style navigator. This seems redundant to me, since the both the tabs and the breadcrumb navigator are used to switch between different elements. Further, a lot of people are not happy with the breadcrumb-style navigation and prefer the existing tabs.

My idea is to separate the components of the browser from the browser itself. In other words the collection, internet, playlists, and files browsers are like the playlist view and context view in this video, they can dragged around, placed wherever you want, turned on and off independently, and stacked as tabs.

What is currently the browser would then become a special storage area for those various elements. So you can drop any element in the browser and that element becomes part of the breadcrumb-style navigator. So for instance you could drop the context view inside the browser and it would show up alongside the collection, internet, playlists, and files lists. So the people who have been asking for the context view to be integrated with the browser like it was in Amarok 1.4 can do so pretty easily. You could also, for example, pull out the collection list and put it where the context view currently is.

This has the added advantage that people can disable the browser entirely. So for people who like the current tabbed system, they can get something very similar by simply unchecking the browser in the list of elements and then just stacking all the elements they want on top of each other to form tabs.

I think this would add a great deal of flexibility, satisfy many of the complaints about the current UI layout, make things more consistent, and make things much more flexible down the road if they decide to add additional elements.

gotta ask - as an fellow openSuse user, did you compile 2.2trunk or do you know where there's a repo?

you might also mention that the browser wiki window now is more functional with wiki links for song, artist and album (as in 3.5 version) plus back and forward keys and most useful you can now click a link in the browser and view it in the browser pane if it's a link to a wiki page (other links open in the default browser)

No, I have not used it, I am going off the screencasts and blog posts on the subject. I did not bring up the other changes because they are not relevant to my idea.