Thanks C.R. That helps a lot, and I would love the patches.
Also, I believe I just resolved the issue with multiple htmlAreas. I found the fix on the InteractiveTools.com forum.
1) In blank-master.adp, add this line *above* the other htmlArea JavaScript includes:
<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript">_editor_url = "/resources/acs-templating/htmlarea/";</script>
2) Download the latest version of htmlarea.js from SourceForge at http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/itools-htmlarea/htmlarea/htmlarea.js and replace the one that it came with.
That worked for me.