Is there any way to disable automatic hiding of the healthbar and item slots?

I personally prefer to have them displayed at all time.

Also from a purist viewpoint i don't see why the healthbar and items vanish while the key/button hints stay displayed the whole time..

There are options to turn each individual item off. But I don't remember seeing an option to leave them on at all times. I turned off the control hints. I just wish they would let us scale the UI more. The mini-map is still huge (set to small) on a 30" monitor.