>Mine is similar to Sergey's. However, I do not like the white background of the message area when it is not in edit mode. You can see it in Sergey's image too. It used to have the same color as the top area background when it was not in edit message mode. This changed on its own. How to set it back? Any idea?

You may click on Options and use the "View message background color" setting.

Let me know if that works.