A few simple FR's...

[Dreamer]

Hello Scott and welcome to the FreeCommander forum.

3. This is already possible, the menu toolbar button and the option to show a single toolbar button with the custom order of items.

4. You can lock the tabs you want to open each time, others will be closed.

5. Just press F10.

7. Try Default action toolbars > General options > One wrappable toolbar.

[alf5000]

1. would be really nice feature
2. ?? not clear to me
3. / 4. / 5. see @Dreamer's post
6. well, would be nice to have
7. see @Dreamer's post
8. Button border? not clear to me
9. fool around in Tab options and you'll find plenty of ways to make tabs super-easily distinguishable
10. ok, would be nice - but hopefully optional, because I'd hate it

[Dreamer]

You're welcome.

3. This is possible.
Right click on status bar and select "show/hide main menu" to disable menu
Right click the main toolbar and select "Customize action toolbars", then "standard" and search the "Show main menu as popup menu", then double click to add it to toolbar.
Then double click buttons you don't need to remove them from toolbar.

6. Just workaround, but what about middle mouse click to close?

7. That way all toolbars are together, do you really need a drive bar? I use just the address bar drive button.

8. menu > tools > view style > gradient - custom > define

9. You can use the highlight color for active and inactive tab, so it's clearly visible which one is the active panel, active tab and inactive panel active tab.

10. Auto-update would be really nice, I have requested it already, optional, of course, this shouldn't be too complicated, since both versions, install and portable are just about copying files (AFAIK), so open some update.exe or .bat file, download new files, close FC, copy new files, re-open FC, of course retain the Settings folder.

[alf5000]

thanks for clarifying things.
I've never tried custom themes, but I have heavily customized FCXE to my likings, so I assume you'll also find a way to do so in FCXE.

I suppose it's just the way you said:
" I agree there are, perhaps I'm just too accustomed to CE?!"
give it a try, I'm pretty sure you'll be happy with FCXE after a while!

autoupdate - in my experience causes frequent problems.
I had it on in FireFox, for example. autoupdate to FF v.35.0 caused severe problems with my bookmarks and I had a hard time to find a 34.xx-version to make it work again.
If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

[Dreamer]

1. Please search the FC forum, there are some solutions, I don't needed, just open FC viac multimedia button on my keyboard it works...
2. Do you really need the drive bar? I use just the option to show the drive button in the address bar. Or you could enable the option to show the drive name, one drive bar per panel, then it will be less empty.
3. This looks as a bug, it was like this before.
4. There is another topic for this, with the workaround.