Configuration Panels Behavior

I am working on several Atahualpa themed webpages. One of them is almost like the default, with two sidebars left and right. On the two of the other ones, I have done significant appearance and style changes. In these two, the configuration option pages do not scale the fields for entering the customised style items: it remains at displaying just one line, hiding additional style item lines.

This does not happen with the website with the close to default configuration. In that one, the entry fields scale with each line I put in, i.e. displaying all the lines I have put in.

I am using firefox as my main browser, but when using safari, I get a little pulldown option in the far right of the entry field to drag and display the 'hidden' options.

My question is why does this happen: is there a placeholder somewhere that defines the behavior of the entry fields in the configuration option pages ?

Peter