I saw a screenshot of the skills display, and it looked like a nicely drawn constellation scene, with a small handful of the skills in view below.. apparently, you have to scroll to see them all.

While the art is nice, I don't really like this setup. I would prefer to see all of my skills on one page, without having to scroll... as in previous TES games. Also, I would like to have a progress bar that shows the skill on a scale of 1 - 100, rather than just a number.

Or am I missing something?

Although I'm not sure exactly what you're asking us, yes, that's the skills page. Constellations. And yes, from the looks of it, and what Todd Howard said about getting his inspiration from Apple, you have to scroll to see them.

Um, you had to scroll to see all skills in vanilla Oblivion as well.

yeh and with less skills you have less to scroll through and more fit on the screen

Ah.. I played the OOO version. But I'm glad they fixed it.. obviously someone else thought it was a pain.

Same in Morrowind (PC, I don't remember if you had to scroll on Xbox), and you had to enter different tabs in Daggerfall. Just to cut out the 'it was better before' comments.

Yep there is scrolling in Morrowind X-box Version as well.

Those stars also show your chosen perks, so there is more info there than just your skills.

Yes, lets just cram everything we possibly can onto the screen at once. I really want to squint when I am trying to read my skills... and to hell with those people who might ave a small TV/monitor. /sarcasm

Seriously, is it really THAT big of deal that you need to spend 2 seconds scrolling to see all your skills? The Skyrim layout is most certainly going to make the skill interface much cleaner, and nice and easy to read. I'm sure even the most lazy of people will be able to deal with the 2 seconds required to find the skill they are looking for. At least I hope so...

Morrowind:
All the windows showing stats etc could be resized, the amount of scrolling was determined by you and the size of your screen.

I do some interface design from time to time, there are only two scenarios you need to consider:

1) The first five minutes a new user spends with the interface
2) A returning user who makes frequent use of the interface

Since every user who uses the interface for more than 5 minutes can be considered a returning user there is little point optimising the interface for the first 5 minutes. So long as there is some logic to the interface most will survive. An interface should be designed to limit annoyance and frustration caused to a returning user and present as much relevant information as possible without becoming messy or cramped.

The new interface looks sixy. I love it.

I'm not entirely comfortable with the new interface but I'm sure it's something I'll get used to. I think part of the reason it looks the way it does is because of the perks which I believe will be displayed on the same screen.

In Morrowind the skills and other stats window had a size limit, it could only expand to about 1/4 of your screen, a bit less actually. The most it could show was about half the skills. The map and inventory could fill the screen, don't remember if the magic list had a limit.

Darnified UI does it best. I don't mind the spreadsheet look (I never use Cover Flow in itunes because I find having to sift through all my albums cumbersome and annoying), and with Darnified UI you could see all 21 skills on one page with other info like which skills were buffed and by how much, the actual percent to the next skill level, and more. This is 2011 most people have a TV that can show 18 lines of text at once. This is a classic example of both "Prettier does not mean better." and "If it ain't broke, fix it until it is."

You don't like the new sixy interface?

I quite like it.

no sorry wrong. you can take up your whole screen with the windows on morrowind

I hate it with a passion. That has always been Apple's problem, all style, no substance. Sure you can get the thinnest laptop ever, but enjoy only having 2 hours on it before it needs a recharge, not being able to use powerful programs as well as on a normal PC, or even a normal Mac desktop, and it breaking quickly because it is so fragile. Oh dear I am ranting. Clarification time: I am in no way against mac, they are fine computers and do what they do well. They just don't do everything I need them too for my projects or other things I enjoy.

But yes I hate the interface. Hopefully it will be as moddable as the Oblivion one was, I was able to make that game's menus look like the menu system from FF7.

The OP actually has a point. The closest thing we get to a class in Skyrim is auto-generated from our character's highest skills, doesn't bother me personally, but is a concern to many who have posted on this forum.
It would be VERY useful, therefore, to have an at-a-glance representation of all skills somewhere in the UI, as the Relative Values are important in this game. With the extra information ( perks ) to be displayed the old style of showing many skills at once has to be changed, but surely a skill with perks constellation, and a relative skill summary page ( a simple bar graph would do ), should be easy enough to implement.

the reason the Skill names are aligned horizontally is because each Skill has it's own vertically ascending Perk-Tree.

to fit 18 trees you practically do kinda need a big portion of the screen and sideway scrolling. Heck 3 trees in other WRPG/MMO's usually takes up a big space, imagine 18.

Its designed so the skills and perks all fit nicely on an hd tv screen.

Also for pure classes mage thief warrior and for some of the combos its very likely most all your skills will be in one page or at the very least just a very short twist away. Only the triple archtype skilset charactera are going to wind up spinning the thing over much.

I don't like the look now, but I'll get over it when the game comes out. Then I'll probably get a modded UI and forget about ever not liking it.

Maybe they could fit them into grid view as well, so you can see more at once?

You could make them into 3 pages - one each for combat, stealth and magic. Each one with 6 items(6 x 3 = 18), with squares with the image/info like an iPhone app screen since Todd said they used iTunes for inspiration for the UI.

e.g. this http://appleotaku.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/iphone-screen1.jpg
but 2x3 squares.

Rather just have a list to scroll down with and just click the skill to see it's perk tree.
This just looks annoying.
All it is is pretty, nothing else.
Rather have an ugly more easily manageable skill list.

I just hope they don't have an animation every time you go into a menu section like was suggested (they mentioned looking up at the sky, into your bag, zooming out for the map etc.).