For the last point, you can double click on a line in the search result page and it will open the file for you. I have to admit I don't particularly enjoy this search UI either, it's rather unintuitive, plus somewhat annoying as well since when you do a new search, if you don't remember to close the search result page the new search results will be appended to the existing page, which isn't what I want most of the time.
Just deselect the "Use Buffer" button in the UI where you type the search, and results will then be shown in a more traditional panel at the bottom of the window.
