The confusion is there for me as well due to the small size of the icons on everything. If I could see what they are, I can most likely figure out what they do but at their size rivaling those of little black ants, that's a no-go for me.
The dark panels being left behind make working on routes difficult because they get in the way. We need screen real estate to work in Surveyor while we drag splines and lay things out. With the panels in the way, we have to constantly shift the mouse around in order to drag splines.
It's unfortunate because there are some great features in Surveyor 2.0, but these two flaws make using it very difficult.