I stumbled on this thread today and found it helpful. While I have wanted a DMX UI option to either fully disable the Details pane (i.e., hide it altogether) or be able to control what is visible through UI option settings.
Well, while this is not ideal, because it is not persistent, since the details.ascx file will get overwritten with each DMX version update, it at least pointed me to where I could turn off sections of the Details pane. For example, I do not see any value to expose the Permissions section, where it shows all of my various security roles, to the standard user. Not only is it meaningless to them, I see it as a security issue.
In any event, I found I can turn off any section by surrounding it with the standard comment characters, as you would use in web.config: <!-- section to comment out -->
In my case, I did this around Permissions, Status and Versions (my client only keeps one version). The sections are very obviously named, so this is very easy to accomplish.
This file is in the DMX Controls folder.
Zip up the file for backup so it can be quickly replaced after the next upgrade (if I remember!).
I hope this helps someone else.
Rob Ralston