The CM1 design interface would be much easier to use if there were directly accessible icons across the top of the screen to access the primary functions that are currently only available via a drop down menu (Dashboard, Editor, Navigation, Design, Publish, and Workflow).
Those 6 icons could be on the upper left. Then on the upper right (which is currently unused) it would be nice to see an icon set for direct access to favorite templates, site sections or other editing functions. CM1 already has some icons in the upper right but again, a drop down menu for “actions” is sort of unnecessary when all those actions could just be shown as additional functional buttons.
Certainly it would be valuable for users who only are doing say, news stories, to have a shortcut icon in the toolbar so that they could just click on that button to take them to the section of pages that they are responsible for maintaining.
CM1 is already a strong Web 2.0 environment but there remains a lot of clicking -> waiting -> clicking some more -> waiting some more, navigating through tabs and drop downs, etc. just to get to commonly used functions.
I’d like to see these all more front and center to maximize efficiency.