My impressions and thoughts for first look...
A general comment: With wide screen monitors, horizontal space is easier to give up than vertical space. Vertical space is a premium. Please keep that in mind when adding things to the vertical space. Using more space for the headings and tabs allows you to put more info there, but takes away from the precious limited vertical space for the main part of the screen. At least having an option to put this on the left hand side vs top could be nice.
I understand wanting to make the gui more accessible for new users. But you need to also not leave users that are used to the system. Ability to control the interface, to a degree, can be useful in this (e.g. minimal view, vs more info view). I can already see some operation I do taking more click in the new interface than in the old. One thing I do (admittedly more in tool admin role than as a developer) is open up the list of repo, then view a repo (e.g. branch explore a repo w/o a WS). It looks like now I have to first click to create a new tab, then select repo list. I assume the rest of my operation would be the same from there, but still at least one more click.
It would be good to have the GUIs more similar across the platforms (for us, esp Windows and Linux). But my first priority would be making features available in one gui available in all. While I could see this consolidating effort a step in that direction, I hope we do not take a step back and see features go missing (e.g that are already in the windows gui today). I would REALLY like to see some missing functions added to the gui as more important than a gui re-design. How long have we now had the ability to create xlinks to a path in a repo, but still have to create it only using the CLI? That (and any other missing functions) need to be added to the gui.
I could see more customization of the gui, esp for experienced users. Say, being able to have a custom left hand "new tab" buttons on the left hand side (hidden and empty when you first install the client?) I could also see more customization to right click menu options for experienced users (not only for tabs for for other contexts).
Thanks,
Todd