1 - No clue, try the settings
2 - Go into the gereric/ sidebar menu table and locate
<record id="column_widget_properties" alignment="left,centre_y" colour="white" size="normal">
<record id="secondary_text_properties" alignment="left,top" size="normal" colour="white"/> there is 3 of this line
and just change the white to yellow
or delete the file so it just picks up the default one
3 - Not sure which icon you refering to,
4 - I don't think you can, it mirror's the big tactics