I have been thinking about uncluttering the interface, especially for smaller screen estate as found on non-developers machines.

The main gripe I have with the current interface is how cramped the initial screen is with search input, search results and current downloads. It has gotten fairly compressed if you think about how the screen switches from search input to current query filtering. At least a non-technical friend of mine was fairly surprised about the sudden screen change.

My idea would be to reorganize the tabs slightly to ease up the pressure on the initial screen. The initial tab search should be confined to entering new searches and should not display any results nor current downloads. It should be renamed "New Search" to more prominently describe it's function. A second tab should be named "Search Results" and should hold the table currently on the top right of the current search tab exclusively, with the filter panel on the left permanently and contextually dependend on which of the sub-tab for the current search result is selected. The monitor tab should hold both the current up and downloads, I consider the incoming search display obsolete by now and if it is to be kept at all it should be on a tab by itself that is hidden by default.

Am I off track with that idea or does it sound reasonable?