I did do a search for this, but only found a bug report where the person was complaining about the treebar covering windows. If I missed a previous report for this, I apologize.

What I would like to see, if possible, is the option to have the treebar show-up when you point to the left/right side (depending on where you have the treebar), temporarily showing over the windows, then auto-hiding again when then cursor is removed from the appropriate side. This is similar to the method that the Windows taskbar uses, when the properties for the taskbar are set for On Top and Auto-Hide (as indicated in Windows XP...the system I'm currently using, but I believe it's the same in Windows versions from 95 on)

If this isn't feasible, or possibly in addition to the above, perhaps a method of allowing a treestyle display from Window section in the menubar.

I like this idea... something like auto-hide nicklist... treebar appears if the mouse is touching that outer border of mIRC, and disappears if the mouse is leaving the treebar area.

Now this I would like to see in mIRC. It would be great.

Would be nice to see it in version 6.33 :P

I like this idea too - however after implementing and experimenting with it, it doesn't seem to be that practical. Regardless of where the hot-spot is located, whether it is in a corner or on the side, or how large or small it is, it always prevents you from accessing part of the MDI area, which in turn prevents you from accessing a window's system menu, editbox, titlebar, sizing borders, or mark/copy of text in some situations.

There is only one situation where it does work: when MDI windows are maximized, the Treebar is on the left, and the hot-spot is in the top-left corner of the MDI window. It wouldn't really make sense to provide this feature just for this one particular display configuration.

Instead of using a hot-spot, another option could be to allow you to pop up the Treebar in an "On Top" state using Control+T. Would that be useful?

Your suggested alternative would more than suffice for my usage.

you could try and see if you can simulate the behaviour of the different windows within visual studio for instance (and other IDE's like eclipse, etc). those can be set to minimize to a small button at a border (any border) and expand on hover over the button. or be made 'sticky' again to show permanently.

when in hover mode it will cover the underlying windows when expanded, while on permanent mode the other windows are adjusted to fit next to it.