I think there is a flaw in the current design concept.
Right now each part of the editor (map editor, tilemap tile selection panel, map tree panel, all the tabs in the database) create their own panel when that are created that can literally be put anywhere in the screen. you can get them all out, open 10 map and arrange all the panels in what ever arrangement you desire.
The flaw is that 99.9% of the ways you COULD arrange them would be destructive to your work flow, and there is no way to quickly switch between two different task that require two different sets of panels. if you did want to switch tasks, say from mapping to database stuff, you would have to close each and every one of you map panels as well as all the tool panels and then open all the database panels you wanted.
Here is what I propose, it's additional layer of management but it should enable quicker, faster, smoother, easier to use workflow.
separating panels into perspectives.
each perspective would be dedicated to a specific task, mapping, database management, scripting, image and audio management ect.. the panels would only be able to dock in the panel they were dispatched to as their perspective. IE you would not be able to dock the script editor in between a bunch of maps, this would offer a clean way to switch between tasks, close one perspective open another. it also has the added benefit of making it easy to save perspectives and what you were doing in them as we can always know what windows were there and what data they held. where as before we had to assume that any panel could be anywhere.
this also makes plugins ect. easier to manage as they can have their own perspective.
thoughts? questions?