Under the receive tab, the first box is description, what is this for, to just label the transaction?
The main way you get the address is to click the "New Address box", which has three tabs, Address(hfeh38yra8wyrav84hntaehe), Request(
bitcoin:hfeh38yra8wyrav84hntaehe) and QR Code.... This is where we want the btc to go right? the description box can be left blank, or what?
How long shoulda transaction be valid, long enough for it to complete I would assume? What are the fees and times liek right now? Like the very minimum fees time for transactions?
The description box is optional, it is only to label the payment request and can be left blank.
When you open the "Receive" tab, it selects one of your bitcoin addresses for you to copy. Then you type an amount, and press the Request button after that. At this point the three tabs you mentioned (Address, Request, and QR code) will be filled in, and you click on the blue clipboard button to copy one of them, and transmit it to the person you want to pay you.
Electrum will usually guess the optimal fee for confirming your transaction in a reasonable amount of time while also keeping the fee low, but you can move the slider towards the left to use even lower fees if you are OK with waiting for it to be confirmed after several more blocks.