Although this is still in the works, DotNetNuke 5.2 beta has a minor improvement in panes preview functionality.

When the core team decided to remove the borders around panes when a user logged in with edit right, the replacement for visual cue is a simple animation shows a pane preview with borders surrounding it. However, the animation was implemented in a way that it goes too fast and users can hardly notices.

This animation is slowed down dramatically in version 5.2 so you can have a proper visual cue on the page while working on it. This is a great usability improvement. However, the downside of that is still the below the fold panes. If the page already has some content and enable the vertical scroll bar, user will not be able to see the position of the panes they selected if they are below the fold.

I'll be spending sometimes to do some more research about getting the pane preview works elegantly while maintaining the usability for all before making proposal to change the current behavior.