I have it on my second monitor and can move it out of the way of one of my 2 3D views also on that monitor when I want to see it.
even with a 23" and 20" setup there just isn't enough room some times.
I'm not one of those people who likes to change everything around all the time, unless the application makes that simple and intuitive. The only application I can think of at the moment that I feel works well with swapping layouts is Adobe Lightroom. Maxwell could learn much from studying truly refined and good UI UX (user interface, user experience) like Lightroom. Maxwell is better than some I use but could be so much more. It's the little details that make a difference. I kind of wish I could work for Nextlimit and help them refine these tools, take them to the next level!
I still feel these two things are so tightly intertwined that either alone is pointless, so it should turn off when the window is closed, and open the window if activated and not open yet. It just feels like how it should work to me.
Why would you want the CPU crunching on live changes to something you can't see. Doesn't seem like it would be all that hard to implement either. (yes, I know sometimes the simple things are hard, and the things that seem hard end up being simple)
I'll have to explore the multiple layouts thing, but I'm kind of worried about them because often they don't survive big updates and I end up just needing to redo more than one if I use more than one. And there isn't a simple button bar to click between them like in Lightroom.