While the app doing whatever it wants may actually make it somewhat easier to use after you get used to it, I do believe that Minimo should do things "properly" for several reasons.
First of all, because familiarity with the standard layout simplifies things a lot especially for casual users (ie, no one will be confused and wonder where the heck the controls are because accessing them requires a double-tap on the background - a completely non-intuitive thing for a WM machine where you either tap a link/icon or tap-and-hold - double-tapping is uncommon to say the least.) Also, through normal menus, you can add far more menus and choices since you can drill down to them from the top and perhaps add a few icons for the really major choices.
Another reason is that the current way of doing it breaks stuff. For instance, an addon I use called Magic Button doesn't work properly while Minimo is running because Minimo monkeys around with the menu bar and shoves it to the bottom and adds a keyboard icon. This also wreaks havoc with selecting what input type you want if you need to change it (ie, bluetooth keyboard, on-screen keyboard or perhaps Calligrapher.)
Instead, Minimo really should do it the way almost all Pocket PC apps do it.
Menus at the bottom, input type selector to the far right bottom and everything visually apparent with the exception of some menus that can be accessed through tap-and-hold directly on the web page.
The biggest problem with doing it this way is losing screen real estate to the controls. This is simple to work around - just make sure the program has a full-screen toggle (accessible from the tap-and-hold-anywhere menu I mention above.)
Minimo shows a lot of promise and I for one am definitely trying out every new release. Currently however it's nowhere near ready for primetime, IMHO.
