Hi, have a Dorico trial and I love it! Big change for me is, that I have to enter the note duration first. In Sibelius I worked in pitch-duration order for years. It would be very helpful for me to see the selected note value in write mode so I can hide the panels (it’s painful to move my eyes to the panel to check it anyway). The orange note indicator should change, like it’s changing during entering another voice. Is something like that possible? Thanks
PS. I am strongly considering Sibelius-Dorico switch 
Welcome to the forum, benkomat. I hope you will very much enjoy your Dorico trial.
The orange note next to the caret indicates only the voice direction and not the selected note duration. There’s no option to make it show the note duration as well. I hope you’ll find that you quickly get used to the shortcuts for changing duration and you can still work with the panel hidden but without feeling unsure about which duration you have selected.
That sounds like a “no” to me 
In all seriousness, the Dorico team has thought long and heard about the nature of that part of the interface (there are discussions about it to be found in the forum ca. 2016), and it seems they’re reluctant to introduce something that might compromise its usability for a segment of the population (e.g. interface colors are managed so color-blind people can still tell them apart). Apparently the voice direction indicator falls into that category. I can’t myself envision how that might be, but if they say it’s the case then I trust them.
Glad you’re strongly considering the switch. Compared with Dorico, Sibelius feels like scratching notation into cave walls with rusty nails.
I think at least one problem with note value is that whole notes then wouldn’t indicate the stem direction of the voice.
It would be nice to see what your current rhythmic value is when you’re inputting notes, if you have the left panel hidden (which I usually do). Maybe this could be shown in the status bar somehow? Or the unused portion of the left palette, just beneath the scissors and the pointer?
But I know UI design is hard, and you wouldn’t want to create confusion with the rhythmic grid indicator in the lower left corner.