Hi,
Thank you for your kind words!
1. If you mean opening all the result in a new tab, you can use this option. There is also a possibility to open only the results pointing to an external URL in a new tab via using this custom code.
2. Well, the items printed there by default are not part of the search plugin, so this will have to be custom coded somehow. You can use the search javascript API for hooks to detect when a search is finished and perhaps remove the other items.