[curt.clifton]

Responding to the OP's question: Yes, I find the view bar and perspectives perfectly sensible. I'm sorry that others don't, and suspect a manual and some videos will help with that. I also think that some built-in perspectives when first launching the application would help people to see the ways that the various options can be combined.

In an earlier thread I posted several perspectives that I use regularly, along with the corresponding View Bar settings. That posting indicated that there was a bug in perspectives, but it has since been fixed.