Hi Don,
Under the Layout options -> Results behavior panel, you can turn off the feature, that closes the results on losing focust/document click, here: https://i.imgur.com/dcwoubD.png
To fix the ordering, simply change the custom field type from the default ‘numeric’ to ‘string or date’ under the ordering options, here: https://i.imgur.com/hYUkdxA.png
That will do the trick.
I hope this helps!