Woot! Good thinking to post this.
Did you shrink the screenshot? It doesn't look as crisp as the real thing.
And where is your chat bar? Hiiden under the shortcutbar?
It was resized from 1280x1024 to 1024xSomething :-)
I got 2 chat windows going, both have 100% transparency backdrop when not active and both have message time-out as well so they usually not this "present".
Left box is for team chatter & tells mostly, right side is some combat & global channels.