I just upgraded to Ubuntu 11.10 and I'm having a couple of issues that I didn't have with #10. First of all, when the terminal is transparent, it shows the desktop rather than the window behind it. Being able to read the window behind the terminal at the same time was a really useful feature of the transparency, but now it's just showing the desktop instead.

Second of all, the Windows key seems to be ignored. I mostly use it for "Windows-D," which shows the desktop. Is there another such shortcut or a way to disable the windows key?

I also switched back to the Gnome Classic view. I like it a lot better than the new view, but the new view had a way to quickly search files and applications based on the name. Where is this in Gnome Classic?