Font weight should be immediately accessible in the task bar. Current iteration has poor UI concerning this- see below on UI.

In the task bar's current form the user must scroll to the font they are currently using, click on the tiny arrow to expand the family, then click on the font.

Yes, thats correct - you have to scroll down to the font you are current using if the context bar is positioned in the top 2/3 of the screen.

If the context bar is positioned on the bottom 1/3, the current font appears first in the list, no scrolling required, , BUT if you expand that font to see the family, you need to scroll the list to see the newly expanded selection.

Then click on the tiny tiny arrow to expand the font in order to pick a weight.

I think Flip operations should be visible for any selection, not just images. And I think we should be able to decide, which options we would like to see in the panel. And I think Ai should allow us to use ANY function it has there, even those existing in panels’ flyout menus (which today we can’t even automate with hotkeys!). Remember — a professional tool is a customizable tool.

It would be nice if when you insert an image into Illustrator, there are the vertical flip, horizontal flip and rotate actions.

Since someone complained that the task bar obstructs visibility, it could be positioned lower or it could be slightly opaque.

The bar does not follow the selection, when the bounding box is turned off. Bounding box should not influence the positioning of the bar. The connection makes little sense.

I want to be able to customize the panel, add the functions I need to the panel (tools, menus, actions, scripts, etc.). Please add a configurator like in the toolbar.

Very hard to come up with ideas for improving it when it is the nature of the thing, not its contents, that I object to. Keeping the UI clean is in my humble view a very good aspiration for the UX team to start from.

It is like another excrescence - the "rich" tool tips which serve almost no purpose except to be annoying.

Please stop cluttering things up will ill-conceived and pretty much useless nuisance ideas. The product has some great new recent features like dimensioning - they are much more worthwhile and I would like to see the focus on this rather than wasting precious development time time on features that don't increase the functionality of the product.

Nick, I somewhat share the feeling towards it. And luckily we can disable it for now — with Window > Contextual Task Bar option.
However — what do you think the team can change to make it a) less atrocious, b) really useful?

I hate this feature. It does MUCH less than the Control bar at the top of the screen and is always in the way and obstructing the artwork.

What good does it do? Please get rid of it. It is totally unnecessary and doesn't have any positive aspects that I can see. It is clutter without any benefit.

love this same like PS. hope to see more AI option in bar

For the contextual task bar you see with the group selection tool, it would be great to have the Simplify and now also the Smooth commands accessible here.

My consistent problem with this concept is that it is constantly in the way. I have to move it out of my way at least a dozen times every hour. And hopefully you are tracking the number of clicks it receives to tell if it is more useful than in the way. In other words, if you register a click event every time someone interacts with your floating context panel, you can separate the number of moves from the number of useful functions clicked. If people are having to move it more than use it or if people aren't using it, that's valuable feedback.

I would much prefer a collapsible side panel with all of the tool options as well as a portion of it for the most common predicted tasks. Sure, I'd have to mouse a little farther, but at least I am not losing my focus constantly having to drop what I was doing and move the thing so I can access the anchor points it's obscuring.

Love this feature!!!

We will be introducing the Contextual Task Bars in Illustrator. This new menu appears on the canvas with one-click access to the most common next actions so that you can quickly complete your next step. Please give it a try and we look forward to your feedback.

This would be similar to what we shipped in Photoshop recently (https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop-beta-discussions/contextual-task-bars-now-in-photoshop-beta/td-p/13658736)