I’ll offer my opinion, for what it’s worth:
I also do not like the Details button at the bottom which opens in a separate window. I didn’t even like the Details Tab very much because it required another step.
As much as I don’t like having another window floating around, one advantage to the pop up window is that you can see both the details and the basic info at the same time, which wasn’t possible with the tabbed arrangement.
However, Marlin writes that tabs went away and Collapsible Scrolling Sections appeared for specific reasons. Can the Details simply be another Collapsible Section rather than a popup window? Then you would be able to see the Details along with the Basic info by having both sections expanded. Of course, it would be nice to be able to drag ANY of the tabbed sections off the side panel and have it open in it’s own floating window similar to InDesign.
I’m coming to Rhino from Vectorworks. VW has been a great tool and the cause of great frustration at times. One thing I really like about VW is that their Object Info Pallet is interactive, meaning that you can change an object directly from the Info Pallet. It also gives useful information about an object and it’s coordinates. Not sure if Rhino could operate this way but here’s a few pics to illustrate:
Circle highlighted:
Info pallet provides easy to see location and size information. You can enter the fields and change the information and the object responds by moving or resizing. It will do calculations directly in the field, meaning if I want the circle to be one inch larger in diameter, I can simply add +1" to the diameter field and press enter.
Nurbs curve highlighted:
You can move and edit control points from the pallet. Rhino has VW beat in that Rhino allows direct selection of a desired control point where VW requires you to use the arrows to work through all the points to get the one you want. Tedious.
But, having the location info of the specific point is helpful and again, modifying the info will move the point.
Cone selected:
More of the same. Pallet changes depending on the object selected.
I do recognize that there are limitations for how much info can be displayed or changed as an object gets more complex, but this approach makes object editing easy.