Ertoocs, personally I don't feel the need to see tabs except on mouseover when I'm changing tabs. If other folks think they should always be shown, I could make that happen in my standard window. So far there hasn't been any big outcry to change it
Sablerose, SOE is now providing an option to show/hide the hotkey spinner as a right-click option. I think the new default is to hide the spinner, but your windows were saved with the old size. Set the spinner how you want it and the window should resize to fit.
As noted in the FAQ, black windows/backgrounds generally indicate a graphics file is missing from the images directory.