The "anchor" seems to be set to the current branch (HEAD) which is not visible right now. You can set it to origin/develop by selecting the first commit and invoking View | Set Anchor Commit.

If you are having problems, please contact us at smartgit@syntevo.com and provide a screenshot for the Changes view illustrating the problem. Thanks in advance.

When switching from "View | Default Coloring" to "View | Branch Coloring", is this more understandable? Do you see some disadvantages compared to the "rainbow" Default Coloring?

Please right-click the line you want to stage. There you can find the requested options.

Next 8.1 preview build will color the merge commits gray and allows to configure this color.

You can set the commit message limit by adding and modifying the following line to smartgit.properties:

smartgit.log.commitMessage.shortLimit=100