Topic: Changing the Interface Yet Again
You know me, always fiddling with the interface. Mostly because I've never been completely happy with it. Too many buttons, for one thing. During my day job, obviously, I can't really work on the game. But I can ponder and sketch things during my breaks.
Part 1: All Those Buttons
I was pondering taking an Oblivion-style approach, with one big panel that comes up with a couple of tabs. One tab with your stats, reputations, quests, and perks...another one with everything item-related. Thinking of this approach made me think of how the entire current drag-and-drop slot system works, which is not all that well. It's very inefficient and really takes a toll on the browser (and memory) to work properly. Fiddling and sketching, I came up with the following rough idea:
(The mockup, by the way, was done with the Pencil Firefox Add-On, which I highly recommend.)
Take a look at the graphic and the notes on it...it pretty well explains what I'm thinking. One thing that might not be completely clear is that parts would hide or show based on your context. For example, the Store section and the Sell column would not be there if you weren't at a shop. The overall design may be different, but it would be waaaay more efficient, consume a lot less bandwidth, and impart a lot more information in less space.
Overall, putting all these different things into two or three panels would let me get rid of pretty much every button/icon in the upper-left corner of the game. You'd just bring up the main panel by clicking on your portrait or pressing the space bar.
Part 2: Navigation
The other thing I was pondering was navigation. Does anybody use the nine navigation buttons in the lower-right corner? I know I never do, and all supported browsers support the keyboard strokes just fine. Should I get rid of those completely, and use keyboard navigation only?
Please throw down your thoughts, suggestions, and criticism. 
