Tunesy: it's not quite as bad as you suggest in that it's possible to work in Director's View the whole time and not change the active pane. I find that using the dolly hotkey 'd' (with the 'Move' tool as default, hotkeys not sticky) and the contraining keys 'Shft' and 'Alt' I can move vertices quickly and where I want. This is moving in 3D space with the minimum of hand movement. Markd: the 'screen pane' is an imaginary plane formed by the monitor screen. Mouse movements up and down are constrain to this plane (which changes as you change your view). Amapi uses this idea.