Annoying things about 10.5

Question

Apparently I'm not the power user I once was, when I used to wield ResEdit with impunity against System 7. Even with a UNIX background, I'm finding each successive release of the OS more complex to comprehend.
Here's a short list of annoyances I've encountered since my recent 10.4->10.5 upgrade. I'm hoping there are settings, configs, etc. that I'm just missing, but thought this forum would be an excellent place to begin (so apologies if these appear really basic, but I haven't found the answers elsewhere thusfar):
1. In pre-10.5, a folder placed on the dock would display its contents as a list when you moused down on the icon in the dock. Seems that's no longer possible.
2. When I double-click a document associated with an already-running app, the document will open in the app, but its window will be beneath any other windows already open -- really annoying and sometimes I miss the fact that the document has actually been opened.
3. If Spaces is running and I double-click a document in one space that is associated with an app that is already running in another space, the document will be opened in the app (see (2)) but Spaces will not switch focus to the space within which the app is running.
4. I haven't figured out any efficient (or possible) way to drag and drop files between executables running in different Spaces.

Answer 1

Thanks (to yourself and everyone) for the guidance.
1. On the issue of seeing the contents of docked folders -- in pre-10.5, if I mouse down on a docked folder, the contents of the folder appear as a list at the top of the resulting pop-out window. In 10.5, that's not a configurable behavior: you can choose to see the docked folder's icon as a folder or a 'stack' of the icons of its contents ("Display as [Folder|Stack]"), and you can set the default View setting for the folder to 'list' (but only if you "Open" or "Show in Finder" the folder ("View Content as..."). You can't see the list of contents directly from the Dock.
This was really useful when I had folders containing all my browsers, all my media players, etc. I could very quickly launch one straight from the Dock, without cluttering the Dock permanently with a preserved icon for each one. Now at a minimum I've added two steps: opening a window for the folder, then finding and launching the app/file. So I guess "better" is in the eyes of the beholder.
For (2, 3, 4) I suspect what was hinted at in a subsequent reply: Microsoft and Spaces aren't playing nice together. I observe this behavior particularly in the Office apps (probably time to re-consider OpenOffice...) but Preview is doing the same thing, which is unexpected.