Separate Widget Settings panel from Widget Panel

[elemazing]

I find it slow to edit pages when making changes or adjustments despite a very fast server. Like many, I have a widescreen monitor and it would be great to have the widget selection panel remain open and have a widget settings panel that could be placed on the opposite side of the screen. It could be dockable (left or right), always open or fly-out when selecting a widget. The user would have the choice - to have a shared panel, as it is now or two separate panels.

It means every time a new widget is added to a page, then an unnecessary click is required to switch back to the widget list and now you either have to search or scroll to add another widget. The new feature favourites will help to some extent, but why not enhance that and add recently and/or most used widget - a grouping at the top for the 2 or 3 most recently or last used widgets - again a setting for the user. And why not increase the max number of widget columns from 4 to 10 if the user has the screen space?

Another handy feature would be a switch on the settings panel which would allow the user to change which tab has focus when editing widgets. At the moment it defaults to the 'content' tab for new widgets and remembers which tab was last viewed for each widget being edited. I think it would be good to have a default displayed tab control (three small icons - select one or deselect all to disable) for these tabs: Content, Style or Advanced.

For example, when making mobile style changes to several widgets there are a lot of clicks involved to select the style tab for each. Then, if you need to repeat the process to make adjustments using the advanced tab, that requires an extra click to switch the tabs each time. A simple icon selector at the top of the settings panel would mean it always shows, for example, the advanced tab for every widget clicked on.