Many thanks for the kind words on the interface -- there's definitely a lot there, though. There are actually some filters on the left side right under the place where you can filter to Your Ships (Q) or Allied Ships (A) or Team Ships (T) and similar. I think it's Shift+Q, but you can see it on the left. It would either say All or Mil there. If you make it Mil, that's usually the most helpful setting, I find. Then it's literally just mobile military ships, and ignores all economic ships and so forth. Less clutter that way.
There are some other uber-helpful filters in that first list, too, such as Knowledge Gathered (K) and Scouts (O) and a few others.