For people having problems with NoScript blocking sites even when they are trusted: I found that removing the add-on completely (rather than disabling it), restarting firefox and then reinstalling the add-on fixed this for me. Sites now appear to respect the settings I select in NoScript. I guess this is something to do with needing to request the proper permissions from firefox, and NoScript is perhaps failing to do this for people who updated automatically?
In any event, the new GUI is a bit of a mess. I don't think I'd have any clue how to use the current version if I hadn't seen the old version and knew that I was expecting to choose between permanently or temporarily allowing scripts etc. Words are always better unless you're expecting your users to be using an icon almost constantly.