Well to be fair, the bar got it's uses for you assigning most important stuff (like skills / items) and spells that you use most or must have a visual indicator of their cooldown.

Then again coming from heroes of might and magic series, where you always had to go through spell book to cast spells in combat or strategic map, is not really a problem to open the popup menu for spells each round.

What I would like - if is not too hard to implement, is an actual spell book (similar to strategic one, but only with tactical spells), as it's way easier to recognize and categorize spells there than on the popup menu (obviously keep the popup one as well).

Definately agree here.

For example see Dragon Age: Origins were you could adjust the length of the skillbar to your liking, up until the point your monitor could support.

Also a spellbook would be better. I hate to open this popupmenu too scroll(!) through it if i have too many spells just to find this one situational one. Much cooler to have a longer quickbar and / or a cooler spellbook which makes it fun to scroll with extra information for each spells.