Separating mini player from album art

I like to keep both album art and the progress bar in the mini player visible at all times. In earlier versions of iTunes this was simple, I just opened the mini player and the album art in separate windows and kept them in a corner of my dektop. No matter what else I was doing, a quick glance in the corner let me know what album was playing and how long the current track still had to play.

I thought that having separate windows like this was removed in iTunes 11.0.3, but discovered that command-clicking on the album art thumbnail would launch it in a new window. Now even this hidden method seems to be removed in 11.0.4.

Does anyone know how to restore this functionality? I would even settle for the progress bar to remain visible in the new combined view, but it disappears as soon as the mouse is somewhere else on the screen (as when I'm doing else on the computer).

I don't understand why Apple feels the necessity to remove (or move) perfectly fine functionality. In this case, it certainly can't be argued that the change made things simpler or better, just different.