I am having an AWFUL time trying to find a good place to park the plugin view window where it doesn't hide something I didn't know that I needed to look for.  Once I get more experienced this will be less of a problem, but for now it is making things kind of hard.  I can't get it to close entirely unless I open something else. I can shrink it down so that only the title bar is showing so it doesn't hide as much. Then I reset layout to get it back to full size, but my system makes SimPe  stay in memory forever if I do too much of that too quickly.  Is it possible to just minimize the plugin view? If so, HOW?  And if not, can it be?

If I posted this in the wrong area, I apologize. This time I really am online while I am supposed to be asleep. Our internet connection was down for a while, and I have too much to do tomorrow morning to play catch-up then.

Go to the SimPE->Windows  menu, and deselect the plugin View. That will remove it from the SimPE window. When you need it again, just go back to the WIndows menu, and reenable it.

I tried doing that, but then all of the other stuff that is tabbed down at the bottom opened up. Squashing their windows so that they don't hide things ended up squashing the plugin view window as well. And I have crashed SimPe 3 times by trying to move the other tabs from the bottom to the side. (I posted the error message that I got the last time it crashed.) It would be nice to have an easier way to hide it than by completely hiding every single tab.  

Can you post a screenshot of your SimPE enviroment?

If I knew how to post a picture, I probably could, but I'm going to be on vacation for a week, so I won't be able to do that very soon anyway.The tutoral in MTS2 on posting pictures requires something like a photobucket account which I won't have unless my husband signs up for one.

And at the moment it is mostly the default settings again anyway, because some of the tabs on the bottom didn't work well on the side, so I reset the layout and started over. I was planning to try moving the plugin to the side and everything else to the bottom, but that is going to have to wait until I get back.

Edit
I still don't have a photobucket account, but I can tell you how to make your environment look like mine.
From a clean install go to the toolbar options and add the neighborhood browser button. Then remove the windowed objects workshop button. After that, go to windows and close package, resource, wrapper, and hex. Move the plugin view so that you have about an inch and a half of white space below it.
If I move the Object workshop tab to the bottom, I need to close it and finder as well, so I don't move it unless I was going to use it.  Then I reset the layout to put them back so I have fewer windows to close. I also discovered to leave the windows at a regular size while moving them, because moving them after they have been squashed too far seems to be what was causing the crashes. (I also discovered that all of the bottom tabs move when you move one, even if its window was closed at the time. It was hard to tell that at first, because I had forgotten which ones they were.)