A hotbar (toolbar, quickbar - make up your minds already sheesh) that stretches across all of the screen is something rather obvious. But im presuming Larian really wanted to keep it smaller.

Thats why i mentioned having atleast two rows visible - at all times.

LordCrash, my suggestion is radically :P different then yours because yours requires constant clicking to expand and minimize (even if it minimizes automatically) while mine is always visible without clicking. Or, just one when you want to see the third row.
- Its better then the current setup.

That requires two clicks to see all three rows and two clicks more to return to the first. (if youre correct with each click)

Obviously, having three rows visible in the space as it is currently would make icons really, really small... which is another reason why i suggested two.

Its the best possible compromise between having the hotbar remain the same size as it is now and seeing more icons - all the time.


-edit-

I actually went and photoshoped this so i can see how it would really look. I just made a few layers out of the hotbar and the icons and adjusted the sizes and numbers.

If you minimize the icons a little, make two rows of them and increase the size of the hotbar only enough for all of it to fit, it is easy to actually see all the spaces in those two rows.

There is ten slots per one row in the hotbar currently.
If i reduce the icons sizes i can get 15 in a single row, so 30 alltogether, in two rows that are both visible.

And i dont like how it looks.
It makes the icons too small, too numerous and hotbar feels too cramped because of it.

If anything, it would be better if there was one row but with 15 icon slots instead of 10 as now, while flipping the rows up and down.

(not any ind of big thing - just thinking out loud)