You can see my findings and my suggestion on the Wiki, but to entice you to read it, the mockup is here :)

http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Fill_and_Stroke_Dialog_Re-Design > http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/File:Solution-fillandstrokedialog.pn... > Thanks and I would love to hear your comments!

Created a patch and screenshot for this in https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/1000023