Thanks so much for that lengthy and insightful reply.
No doubt you guys have put much more thought into it than me and all the reasons you mentioned.
If I may, just a few comments:
As your mockups show, some items might have very long lists (nearly all items from inspectors 3-8 are for all elements). This means there'd be a lot more manual management of the list as far as scrolling and collapsing/expanding items. This gets annoying fast!
You could always group similar features reducing the list. For example, Scale, Rotation and Transform Origin could be combined into a singe "Transform" group. Shadow, Reflection and Filter Effects could be grouped into "Effects". Background and Border into "Appearance", Class Name, Unique Element ID into "Identity"... you get the picture. I think a user will mostly likely always have there most used groups collapsed for easy access and then occasion when needed they can expand the lesser used. So, in my opinion it is less annoying. My whole issue with the current implementation is that its not clear what properties can be applied to a particular element without having to switch between every tab. Also, adding document and scene into the mix further complicates it.
It avoids confusion with understanding your selection and what you might be seeing (especially with the document/scene items)
This issue was addressed in my mockups. You will notice scene is selectable via the timeline. It kind of makes sense to treat Scene as the of element. I mean you can see it on the stage, you can modify its properties such as width height, background color, add actions to it just like all other elements. The odd one out was document which is why I suggested it as its own tab in the top toolbar (Inspector, Document, Resources)
Not all items are a high priority; like the Display Name is rarely changed, but being with a "D" would show up near the top of an alphabetical list. So then you need a different (and perhaps arbitrary) ordering.
Yes this is true which is why these could remain closed and at the bottom. Perhaps even a method to custom order lists to your liking. So if you use Display Name a lot you could drag it to the top of the list.
We took a lot of inspiration from iWork apps, which at the time had a stable interface.
The interface is killer. All the customizations are amazing.
Now the iWork inspector is more contextual, but to do it this (and your mockups) have to add another chooser at the top anyways.
Not sure I understand?
End of the day, I am becoming slightly more familiar with the UI and admittedly its becoming slightly easier to navigate. A more contextual UI would be most welcome. Anyways, thanks for the awesome tools. Hype is by far the best tool available for now and heres hoping you guys can remain one step ahead of the competition.