If there’s one thing in Synfig that actually gets in the way of art is the docks (especially for those who have small 15 inch wide LCD) and it usually requires some of the docks to remain in different virtual desktops while you focus on the canvas, and when you want the tools pronto you switch desktops and lose momentum. Here’s my suggestion.
An option for Minimal workplace and docked docks (if I’m making sense). Currently in KDE they’ve got a plugin for GIMP which combines it into one window similar to the recent additions of Photoshop which is sorta neat, but there’s more possibilities to it. Usually some artists prefer to work on as large a canvas as possible to keep an eye on details and a handful of shortcuts to remember with their fingers on the keyboard. A “full view” like OpenOffice isn’t necessary the answer there.
What I’m suggesting is having a mode to combine Synfig windows like KDE GIMP, Toon Boom, Pencil or Photoshop CS4 which could easily be dragged to the side if unneeded, and also having four buttons at the top of the maximized canvas:
Hide/Show 1 2 3
Button 1 - will show/hide the Toolbox (doesn’t “close” it, just hides it)
Button 2 - Will show/hide the layers and navigators and sort.
Button 3 - will show/hide the keyframes/metadata/parameters box.
Now the advantages of this is that if you accidentally close the Parameters box you don’t have to go to “restore default” or even manually go to show > Panels and arrange it all by yourself. These buttons would be the quickest way to switch on or off those docks when not needed without closing them and without losing your concentration, speeding up productivity.