Personally I feel that the Filter Effects UI is still quite clumsy, the combination of a list based node editor isn't very user friendly. A more node based approach like MapFX would be far easier to use in my opinion.

What do you guys think?

In my opinion it is all the same to me, the list works when it has to be in small window, and the other one from MapFX is blown up version of list to fit the whole screen

No idea how to use either method.
I find the filter effects UI really unintuitive.

Here is a shot of FlowCanvas, a free gtkmm add-on, this is what I hope the Filters UI will look like:

Looks nice.