About the proactive/reactive thing; the problem is that there's no incentive to use them proactively, unless you have a really good DM. As a player, you can count on the really good DM to have lots of information available or improvised well enough to be as-good-as, and to come up with creative ways to let you implement your skill check. And that's fine, but "A good DM will do it" does not good design make.
Plus, that relies on the DM doing the work to put it together, and the rewards to the players are far from guaranteed even on a success. What I'm saying, really, is that you need to have a mechanical reason hard-coded into the system to be good at skills; "Succeeding on skill checks" isn't good enough, as the system stands. There are two options; you can give bonuses from being good at skills, purely from being good at them, or you can come up with better skill checks written into the system that the player can ask to make. Almost all of the good skills actually have these latter; Tumble relies on the character requesting to avoid attacks of opportunity, Use Magic Device relies on the character requesting to Use a Magic Device, Iaijutsu Focus relies on the character trying to catch people flat-footed. One of Intimidate's greatest uses relies on trying to demoralize opponents, and Bluff is at its greatest when the player is actively trying to make people believe ridiculous things (or has picked up enough action-reducers to Feint as a reasonable action).
Part of the reason these skills are considered good, aside from these raw mechanical effects, is because the player is in a position to make them useful, even if the DM doesn't particularly put the effort in. You're all but guaranteed to have a use for Tumble if you want it. You're only guaranteed a use for Forgery if the DM wants it, and that's why nobody puts ranks in Forgery (except the people who realize that nobody puts ranks in Forgery, but please don't let us get into the metacycle there). That's why Tiger Claw makes Jump a skill worth putting ranks into; you have a reason to start making Jump checks.