What all of the comments and the article here miss is that some of the buttons embed style tags which take precedence over CSS (color choice, for example), making it possible for a naive user to create a mess where things are impossible to override cleanly in the stylesheet.

The problem with the editor is that it includes both structural tags (heading levels, bold/italic, etc) AND visual formatting (colors). Ideally, the visual styling lives entirely in the CSS with the HTML defining structure. Buttons that enable structure should be left, buttons that override styling should be removed.

How should buttons be arranged? Eh, I dno't think that's the heart of the issue. What is important is that the buttons should a) make sense if in default position and b) it should be FAR more intuitive to rearrange buttons or to add other buttons. Sure, I can install TinyMCE Advanced, but most endusers... aren't going to do that.