'Bout time for a different thread. :)
A couple of comments on things in the UI gleaned from a weekend in the beta.
1. There is a really nice feature that is not enabled by default. esc->preferences->general options has a box to click to enable AE looting. If you killed 3 things that have loot in the same area, as soon as you click on one of them all the items from all the different bodies show up in one window. All the usual loot settings are there (e.g. autoloot) as well.
2. When you have the preferences screen open, the different settings for the ui are grouped in categories along the left. Sometimes you need to scroll down the window on the right to see everything in a category. What might not be obvious is that there are tabs at the bottom of the frame to switch between ui settings and key bindings. While the key bindings start out similar to WoW, they are not exactly the same, and you might find it easier for your fingers to remember if you change them. (They use this tab-at-the-bottom arrangement in a lot of places--inventory, character sheet, etc.) I recommend fiddling with things when you get your first character made.
3. If you have a Mac and dual boot, the one machine we tried it on had a very sensitive mouse. We had to go into the windows control panel to adjust pointer sensitivity down, as well as turn it down in game. If you have problems mouse steering, try adjusting both places. Do not try to master the drunken jedi movement style.
4. As the game occurs thousands of years before "long ago", there are certain aspects of modern UI design that have not been discovered yet. You cannot move the boxes on the screen, you cannot change the scale. You can change font size and color. You can add in extra action bars, and you will need them in your teens. Supposedly, some of these things are on their list to add, but "soon" is already trademarked by Blizzard.
5. If you have a character that changes stances (e.g., cover), the primary action bar changes just like it does in WoW. The problem is that by default they put all abilities on your action bar as you learn them, and put on the stance bar only those abilities you can use in that stance. So, things change position. You might want to spend a few moments removing the things from your primary bar that you can't use if you aren't in cover (or whatever) and adjusting to get the same action in the same place on the two bars.
6. Quest items have their own inventory space...yay. You find them by using the tab at the bottom of the inventory screen.
Perhaps Zyrena has some other comments to add?
Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. They just recently added item linking and player name click functionality (whisper, group invite, etc.) to the chat window early this month, which was a welcome addition. In a game of this scale, it's understandable that some things will need to wait to be implemented for a while so they can make sure the major stuff is ready for launch. Right now it's all about the server stress tests, making sure they can handle the load in December.
One nice thing they apparently just added but I haven't tried out yet is crafting materials in your Cargo Hold (player bank) can be used for crafting.
All in all, the game feels far more polished than WoW was even several months after it was released (remember Captain Placeholder?). Yes there are still some annoying bugs that need to be sorted out, but nearly all of the truly game breaking stuff has been taken care of. Mind you, my experience is limited to sub-40 level play. I haven't been able to push a character to max level yet before build wipes. So, at least I'll still have some surprises in store after release.
One of the things it took me until this most recent beta weekend to realize is that your action bar has a tiny button on the upper(?) left side which will expand it to two rows. Your action bar will fill up fairly rapidly at early levels, and not every action is what I would term "essential"... but having the ability to double the number of buttons on your screen is going to help, particularly for the "optimal only once in a while" abilities.
Having only 2 hotbars on the lower-center screen made me think very hard about which skills I was putting there, esp. on my Sith Inquisitor When I played an Agent, your cover bar pops over when you drop into cover, so you can keep your Cover-only abilities there, and apart from the other two bars.
You can also have a vertical bar on the left & right side; this is where I typically put my 'recall' skill, my group buff, my revive, my regen, etc. Things you don't use often.