The colors on the A17 interface are not clear. Is there any way I can improve this?
Make sure that the Display Property settings for the Color Palette are set higher than '256'.

I want to have the ability to have two PDF documents open at the same time. How can this be achieved?
This is a default setting in Acrobat which can be altered by going to 'File/Preferences/General' and, under 'Options', unchecking 'Open Cross-Doc Links in Same Window'.