i have done some paintbrush hacking of the existing musicbee default skin to give everyone a better idea how i have interpreted the suggestions.
edit:
i have hacked in some of Mikebo's Calcium skin elements which i think look much better
- the menu bar could optionally be displayed in the caption bar. By default it would be accessible via the "MusicBee v" button
- ALL CAPS for the tab headers would be set by the skin eg. its more appropriate for skins like endeavour1934's
- the tabs bar replaces the left navigator but its up to you what items that were in the left navigator you want to add
- Podcasts and Inbox as tab headers would include the count in the tab header
- You would be able to choose and add a library filter to the tabs bar
- If you add the same item more than once eg. Playlists, then the name of the active playlist would be included in the tabs header
- the tabs bar/ icons and search box could be docked at the top for space constained screens
- probably the current vertical dock for the tabs bar would not be supported (nor the various other options you have today) - basically it will span the entire application window
- clicking on an active tab (Music in the screenshot) or on the new tab button would popup the equivalent of today's left navigator where you could select which node becomes active in the tab. See
http://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=14941.msg89246#msg89246 for something how the popup would look
- clicking the Playlists would populate the left panel with the playlists (and also the Music and Inbox nodes so its easy to drag files from the library into a playlist). Similarily the Computer tab would show all the drives/folders in the left panel
- the status bar is missing from the screenshot but it would be optionally enabled for when the player is down the bottom as i appreciate it will be important to some people. It would always show if the player was docked at the top
- The summary information from the current status bar is in the left panel for the top "All" item
- the column browser panel could be optionally enabled and display in the same ways as now
- the left panel could also display other categories such as genres, albums, etc, the column browsers vertically stacked and also the library explorer and optionally an artist or album picture on the bottom left
- the left panel could also be hidden if you just wanted to use the column browsers horizontally instead
- i am not sure whether MB would still support docking the Now Playing list in the left panel or bottom of the main panel
- the player panel could also be docked at the top and support the current options with regards to wavebar and visualiser. I have not yet thought about how the player docked in the right sidebar would work
- the main panel would still support the same views as now and possible an artist explorer but i havent thought about that yet
- for the track details view I anticipate making the rows at least a couple of pixels higher than the screenshot, except perhaps for space constrained screens where each row will be closer
- the right panel would still support pretty much the same options as today, except "Playing Tracks v" would toggle between "Playing Album v" (a new view that only shows the playing album with a small picture and some album info)) and "Selected Tracks v" where the now playing list would show the selected files and the rest of the panel based on those selected tracks
- the right panel could be hidden
- any text with the drop-down arrow obviously shows a popup of the choices avalable. And clicking the text itself would toggle the through the options without the popup showing
