Modify Header Cart and Search sections

Howdy,

I am tinkering with my woocommerce (storefront using powerpack) header and cant figure a few things out.

1) I was surprised to find no easy way to modify the placeholder text in the header search box. My site is multilingual using polypro and, since the placeholder text translated based on current language, I assumed there would be a way to set change the placeholder text under string translations….. but there wasn’t. And not in widgets either. So, I researched and apparently only way was to do a translation via function which worked fine but seemed like an odd way to go about it imo.

2) I would really like to have a simple and sleek section on the right side of header with #1) a simple search icon that, when selected, opens up a search field (like in the handheld footer!) and #2) a simplified cart section with ONLY the Cart symbol (also just like in the handheld footer!) that when hovered on still displays the wider cart info dropdown and #3) a “my account” icon (again, just like in the handheld footer!) plus, ideally, #4) the language selector.

I have of course looked around for how i could duplicate/modify the handheld footer into the larger mediascreen header but just am not finding it… ie where in the functions and how to tweak it like this. Anyone done this or have ideas? Seems like a nice, more compact and elegant way to present this stuff in the header imo….