#Displaying faces
Doug,
As far as deleting the faces, don't hold the mouse button down. Select the
vertice and release the button. Move the mouse around and you should see the
faces that share the selected vertice "highlite". When the face that you
want to delete is highlited, click the mouse button again. You will be
prompted to confirm that you do indeed want to delete that face. Let me know
if this works for you.
This should also help with the face-align-viewport problem. Good luck!
Marty