Hell, v3 has been in alpha since October and personally I don't think it's fair to Steven to start requesting major GUI changes now that the public beta has been launched. Especially since most of the people (myself included) have been using v3 since the beginning.
HOWEVER!! This layout definitely meets the criteria of "a picture is worth a thousand words." The layout is brilliant. Even a first time user should be able to understand what's what.
I could never have come up with this without everything Steven has already invented, accomplished and fine-tuned with the current configuration panel the last few months/weeks.
If you analyze this wysiwyg panel, and compare it with the current one, I think that almost all of the mechanics behind it are already in place, and now working quite well.
To me it feels like a logical step and moment to now bring it up one more level, from having great working mechanics, and transferring that to an even easier interface.
So I am assuming (yes, a dangerous thing to do), that this would be a less immense overhaul for Steven to do than you might think it is.