FWIW, I've always had the Column Browser at the top, and I use 4 columns, Genres, Composers, Artists, and Albums. My priorities have always been to avoid truncating text in the columns as much as possible and not to have a horizontal scrollbar in the song list, while viewing good-sized columns for Name, Artist, Album by Artist/Year, Genre, and Comments (other columns I include like Track #, Year, and Bit Rate are pretty much fixed size). Putting the columns on the left is at odds with my priorities, and it's basically impossible to consistently eliminate vertical scrolling even when you put the columns on the left.
Q: Is there a master "Home" key shortcut, to reset all the columns to their "All" items?