I just wanted to make some improvements to my original mockups...see if there is any interest in keeping this thread alive ^_^
(zoom feature)
Tried to take into account some of the OPs thoughts and also a few of the things I saw in the thread.
1.) everything would have a hotkey or possibly even two. To get into the menus on the side the top leaf would be "1", second from top would be "q", third would be "a", and fourth would be "z" or you could hold alt and then press the first letter of the menus title, for instance engineering and construction would be alt+e
2.) I didn't have time to think about it, but the submenus would be divided so each menu would have no more than 9 items. Each item could them be assigned a hotkey q,w,e,a,s,d,z,x,c (maybe twelve including 1,2,3) (thank you, lesconrads)
3.) Pressing the hotkey would pop the chosen menu and it would then tack until cleared with space bar.
4.) where is the mini-map? Well in the future (!!!) we will be able to zoom in and out. Mouse scroll or ctrl+up/ctrl+down will zoom. (I guess this one is a suggestion of its own)
5.) left click and hold on an item/building/dwarf to bring up an interaction menu. right clicking recenters view where you clicked.
6.) Messages can be expanded and contracted to any size and then can be sorted by type of message with the dropdown. Click on message to zoom to event.
7.) the little status tabs next to menu can show a certain stat. Click to change which stat to view (up now are dwarves, prepared food, and drinks).
If these aren't any good, feel free to comment as such. I just wanted to get my ideas out of my head onto paper.
Thanks for reading!