Interface issues with Frame 12 in Parallels

[Steve Rickaby]

I am newly experiencing the joys of v 12 in Parallels, moving from v 7 on Mac (irony intentional).

1. I am left-handed, and prefer dialogs/pods on the left. Is there any way to enforce this without the document being covered by pods? I am asking this question here because of item 2.

2. In a Parallels install of v 12 under Win7, online help is completely unusable: everything appears in a single column even if the dialog is widened.

Base machine is a Mac Pro running Mavericks.

Any help welcomed.
-- 
Steve