Reverting UI changes over the years (Cent 3.0.4 -> 5.0)

[DAOWAce]

So I've gotten really sick of having issues with using an old browser, so I tried to update to the latest, and unfortunately ran into even worse issues that make me want to just deal with the problems I currently have in 3.0.4.

I would greatly appreciate if anyone can chime in with knowledge about how to resolve these issues.

First off, the entire way the browser looks changed.  Theme was the same (reverted to default in v5), but it doesn't matter since all that changed was color.  Here's a comparison of old vs new:

       

There is so much useless garbage added and I don't see a way to remove all of it in options.  I instinctively tried to find a way to edit toolbars like in Firefox, but it seems like Chrome still does not have such a feature.  This is, by far, the most obnoxious change, especially the addition of the < > buttons for tab switching, as I keep clicking them instead of the + to open a new tab, which is WAY over to the right now.  In options there is a disable < > buttons, and 'avatar' (account) and sidebar, but I don't see options for the rest, nor a way to reduce the gigantic blank space.


The space this takes up is enormous and annoying, especially with the new tab design:

       
There's 3 less tabs visible, and the old tabs still took up slightly more space.  The old tabs also still have the visuals of being a tab instead of cut off with a | into no visual element. Overall, there's so much less workable space and it's visually worse.

Why did they change this?  It's similar to what Firefox does:

   

The 'new tab' page changed for the worse:

Gone are thumbnails for the sites, now it's just theme clashing (bright white) Android-like icons of the favicon.





There's also that search menu I don't know how to edit.  It doesn't respect the browser's search engine settings.


There's useless "QR Code" options in menus I can't find a way to disable, right in their own section too (+1 divider):



Everything changed to rounded corners instead of square (windows 11 garbage).

The font rendering is different (worse), despite disable-direct-write (and for-ui) still being enabled:




The font looks blurrier with more aberration.  The exact reason I ceased using other browsers and refused to update Cent due to the font rendering changes.

Comparing these images I see now the "trapezoid" tabs are gone, no wonder they look so much worse, with less visual identifiers between them.



Does anyone know of solutions to mitigate all of these listed issues?


There's probably a multitude of other issues I haven't seen yet from my quick overview, but I don't even want to continue testing it anymore.  I'll be seeing, once again, if an older version of Cent is more usable, but as there's been major bugs with directwrite in past versions, there may not be a suitable version with the old UI system.

If only Firefox didn't become obnoxious too, I would switch back after all these years..

---

Now to switch gears:  What is the point of Cent Browser, exactly?  The design philosophy and all that.

If it's just mirroring Chromium's changes but with some minor additions and the disable directwrite flag still there, I don't really see the point to developing it.  I'm not sure how many features I actually use that are Cent specific (last used Chrome in v51), but the DirectWrite thing is 100% the reason I switched.  But with builds like https://github.com/GTANAdam/GDIChromium, the need for this was largely gone.  If Vivaldi had a GDI-enabled build, that would have been my browser of choice years ago; there's significant customization, FAR more than Cent, but the font is awful, like all directwrite fonts, so I only use it as a "site not working in old cent" browser.

It would be nice if I was an adaptable human, as they're often depicted in science fiction media (notably games), but I'm not.  I can't stand change even a tiny bit, and it aggravates me to no end.  There's changes Microsoft made to Windows in Vista that still negatively impact my daily usage experience in 10 (nevermind the constant UI changes every major update ruining even more 25 year old workflows).   Companies just refuse to keep things the same, never consider going back or giving anyone an option, and people like me suffer the consequences without end.

[Admini]

Are you using MacType at the same time?
It can optimize font rendering significantly.
The space area after + is called "Drag Space", which is used to drag and move the window.
We don't like some of the changes too.
But always keeping the old design is huge workload.
On the other side, the rounded style should be used to match with Win11.

[Wieln1]

So I've gotten really sick of having issues with using an old browser, so I tried to update to the latest, and unfortunately ran into even worse issues that make me want to just deal with the problems I currently have in 3.0.4.

I would greatly appreciate if anyone can chime in with knowledge about how to resolve these issues.

First off, the entire way the browser looks changed.  Theme was the same (reverted to default in v5), but it doesn't matter since all that changed was color.  Here's a comparison of old vs new:



There is so much useless garbage added and I don't see a way to remove all of it in options.  I instinctively tried to find a way to edit toolbars like in Firefox, but it seems like Chrome still does not have such a feature.  This is, by far, the most obnoxious change, especially the addition of the < > buttons for tab switching, as I keep clicking them instead of the + to open a new tab, which is WAY over to the right now.  In options there is a disable < > buttons, and 'avatar' (account) and sidebar, but I don't see options for the rest, nor a way to reduce the gigantic blank space.


The space this takes up is enormous and annoying, especially with the new tab design:


There's 3 less tabs visible, and the old tabs still took up slightly more space.  The old tabs also still have the visuals of being a tab instead of cut off with a | into no visual element. Overall, there's so much less workable space and it's visually worse.

Why did they change this?  It's similar to what Firefox does:



The 'new tab' page changed for the worse:

Gone are thumbnails for the sites, now it's just theme clashing (bright white) Android-like icons of the favicon.





There's also that search menu I don't know how to edit.  It doesn't respect the browser's search engine settings.


There's useless "QR Code" options in menus I can't find a way to disable, right in their own section too (+1 divider):



Everything changed to rounded corners instead of square (windows 11 garbage).

The font rendering is different (worse), despite disable-direct-write (and for-ui) still being enabled:




The font looks blurrier with more aberration.  The exact reason I ceased using other browsers and refused to update Cent due to the font rendering changes.

Comparing these images I see now the "trapezoid" tabs are gone, no wonder they look so much worse, with less visual identifiers between them.



Does anyone know of solutions to mitigate all of these listed issues?


There's probably a multitude of other issues I haven't seen yet from my quick overview, but I don't even want to continue testing it anymore.  I'll be seeing, once again, if an older version of Cent is more usable, but as there's been major bugs with directwrite in past versions, there may not be a suitable version with the old UI system.

If only Firefox didn't become obnoxious too, I would switch back after all these years..

---

Now to switch gears:  What is the point of Cent Browser, exactly?  The design philosophy and all that.

If it's just mirroring Chromium's changes but with some minor additions and the disable directwrite flag still there, I don't really see the point to developing it.  I'm not sure how many features I actually use that are Cent specific (last used Chrome in v51), but the DirectWrite thing is 100% the reason I switched.  But with builds like https://github.com/GTANAdam/GDIChromium, the need for this was largely gone.  If Vivaldi had a GDI-enabled build, that would have been my browser of choice years ago; there's significant customization, FAR more than Cent, but the font is awful, like all directwrite fonts, so I only use it as a "site not working in old cent" browser.

It would be nice if I was an adaptable human, as they're often depicted in science fiction media (notably games), but I'm not.  I can't stand change even a tiny bit, and it aggravates me to no end.  There's changes Microsoft made to Windows in Vista that still negatively impact my daily usage experience in 10 (nevermind the constant UI changes every major update ruining even more 25 year old workflows).   Companies just refuse to keep things the same, never consider going back or giving anyone an option, and people like me suffer the consequences without end.

If you want old-school looking compact tab bar you can use this but this still not restore the trapezoid tabs
Go to chrome://settings/cbOtherOptions
Enable startup command line and enter folowing:
--force-device-scale-factor=0.907 --cb-compact-ui

[Admini]

If you want old-school looking compact tab bar you can use this but this still not restore the trapezoid tabs
Go to chrome://settings/cbOtherOptions
Enable startup command line and enter folowing:
--force-device-scale-factor=0.907 --cb-compact-ui

Thanks for answering.