- Regarding the status bar, I'm still for displaying it only at the bottom of the main panel. All activity text (including those from left sidebar) can be displayed on the left, file summary text on the right. As you said, no reason to show it under both siderbars with no buttons on it.
- We had no user so far asking about how to configure the player bar, but I expect lots of new users asking such a question with this new layout. In fact, people have kept asking about how to change views or open playing track panel in tab, failing to find out that far-from-intuitive Configure Layout button. Say, you're trying to hide love icon from the player bar, then why do you have to move the mouse from the player bar to the Configure Layout button instead of using one-click context menu? This already happened with tabs bar configuration before. Why do we have to locate the button and move the mouse to it instead of right-clicking on tabs when we want to change the tabs layout? And now you're trying to remove Configure panel setting menu (from another Configure Layout button) as well? What's the benefit?