Notification System is atrocious

I have been playing since 3.0 and it blows my mind that in all of GGG's growth, they STILL have not learned how to make a decent UI element.

1) Notifications lasting for what feels like 20 seconds (and not having this value be customizable) is infuriating. Beyond 3 seconds is wildly wasteful.
2) Notifications covering trade/inventory windows is a pre 2000's developer mistake. How this hasn't been fixed in so many years really blows my mind.
3) Notifications for Kingsmarch are not helpful. We don't care about successful ship runs. We only want to know about failed runs - THIS should be front and center, with a persistent icon somewhere on the UI showing the map runners have died or are captured.
4) Notifications not being immediately closable with a RIGHT CLICK (not needing to hit the tiny X in the middle of combat) is a poor design choice. This applies to sales, kingsmarch updates, AND people on the friends list logging on/off. I want to know this... i just don't want it to cover important UI elements ALL THE TIME and require clicking a tiny X to close each one.