I use the Edit Action box a lot to keep a running update of the task status, email snippets, etc. There are a few simple changes that would make it a bit more useful:

1. Increase the text box size (maybe even configurable)

2. Have a button that would pop-up a much larger standalone text box in its own browser window (like some of the blog 'Add a comment' features do)

3. Add Submit and Cancel to the top of the window since often times they're off the bottom of the screen.

I changed the view template for my own installation to deal with 1 and 3 and I like it better, though something like this may be highly user dependent.

Regards,
Jim