I find it particularly helpful that the position of buildings and abilities displayed correspond to the keyboard layout for the hotkeys (QWERT and ASDFG, respectively). This is definitely a tool when you're doing mass planet upgrades. I would like a way to tab through my colonies a bit easier though (all planets only appear in the empire list under a star sometimes, and I don't know why; this is the only time I can tab through colonies when all have been selected).