...no offence to the guys who have put a lot of effort in, but in reality I have to agree the CE IDE is not brilliant when I think about it. I say this from the standpoint of someone who has only booted it up a couple of times, so I'm sure there are a lot of behind-the-scenes improvements I'm unaware of. Still, it's not an ideal solution, but it's all I can think of at the moment.
And the two reasons why it hasn't progressed much beyond the official IDE? Relatively few people have / want to contribute (but many thanks to those that have), and secondly that of motiviation: why try to improve if people prefer to use other IDEs, or (as was thought to be the case for the last year) mark's working on a swankier new one.