Project window hard to tell which events are active

I’m a very long time user of Nuendo and recently bought Cubase 8 and now 8.5. I find the project window hard to work in. When I am comping tracks, it’s very hard to tell which lane is muted and which is active. It’s very obvious in Nuendo 5. Also, I find that when I am selecting takes from lanes and muting the unwanted takes, the muted take will still cut off a non-muted lane if there is an overlap. That seems like a bug to me.

Anyone else have these problems and what did you do to resolve it?
thanks