FWIW, you’re not alone with this one. I don’t know that the Rhino 7 gripper is better/prettier, but at least it disappears when one locks the docked windows:
One can hide the dots, buts that’s hardly a solution (i.e. the large grip area is still there). This issue appears to be related (i.e. the headers do not disappear when locking docked windows):
All quite bloatey…