The current Inventory UI is very hard to sort items. I suggest changing the Inventory UI to be like the Crafting UI, and keep an option to switch between the new one and the traditional one.
With the sheer number of blocks that you can have, it would be a really bad experience to look through your inventory in an enlarged "detail" view. Can you imagine all the scrolling? As for sort, how do you want it sorted? Color? Type? Durability? Weapon type? Weapons before shields? Tier-based, no matter what?
I think I prefer my manual sorting to this. Having it like the crafting interface would be like what @Akado mentions; long, more tedious, and confusing. I wouldn't mind there be a sort button like others have suggested before, or set of buttons to sort what shows up first. Like a row of buttons along the bottom; 1 click will sort those alphanumerically to the top, left to right. Each button would represent a type of item/block. Blocks would have their own button, although probably separate since they have their own tab. So the first tab could have: ores, weapons, armor, consumables, throwables, tools, Generic, and Misc. While the second tab when on that one would have: Moving blocks (gravel), common blocks (dirt, cobble, etc.), Furniture, platforms (stairs & ladders), and Misc. For each time you push a button it will sort those to top left to right, row by row, while ignoring the rest. Ignore as in not sort or touch (All the sorted items would simply go in front of those items. That is one way it could be done in a simple way. A more complex way would be opening a second interface that lets up decide priority for each slot by type. In case of almost full inventory slots with priority take precedence for placement of those type items picked up, and will move any item that does not belong in that spot to another empty spot. Inventory full would simply act as it does now, you just can not pick up anymore items. I didn't go into much detail on the second one but those are 2 possible ways to go about it. There are many more I assure you. Enough of my rant, as I really don't like the initial idea as it stands due to what I mentioned.
The crafting UI has a "search" function, and filters for different type of items. It can actually replace the current inventory UI without any difficulty.
