Could be tabs in the chatbox. One for the full chat, one for team only chat and one for messages (which would be the first one). If you're about to type in something it would switch to the according chat tab (all or team). Then you could get back to the messages tab if you wanted or the 'all in one' chat tab eventually (such as the current one). There have been many examples of such chatboxes in Garry's Mod for example.

Personally I would agree with this even if that's not easy to get some good hit results ^^. Thinking about Battlefield 3 for example where you can do that in transport choppers it's not always very useful (unless you have a very good pilot and no very good pilot in the other team heh). But still it would sound normal to allow players to fire. Or if not they should not be able to hold their weapons and have their arms used differently.

Noticed that too. When you buy a computer that allows you to play at the highest settings that's the kind of things you will definitely notice I'm afraid.

I guess lower settings put more things on your CPU while higher settings put them on your GPU.

Yeah I had this many times in multiplayer already too. This is really annoying and got me dead multiple times... You should change your priority to very high in my opinion because this really can't remain.

Same here. I had the opportunity to try multiple times and never worked (SP and MP).

Thank you for your consideration.

Here is a small video showing how it works:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OZZoSlYQaE