Personally, I think it was easier, faster to search and locate whatever you need.

I think the new version looks way better, although I do see some flaws in it, which are:
- The pencil button is gone! It allowed to jump directly to posting a question/notebook entry from the quick access bar at the top, now it takes one more click(3 clicks instead of 2)
- The  "Notifications" unwrap dramatically big, dimming the rest of the screen, besides, there are two divisions there now, thus requiring an extra click again.
- The flags and the quick buttons of languages I speak in "Answers/Notebook/Discussions" are gone. Why again? Not only an extra click required, but even a scroll. Oh no.

These three functions were definitely arranged better in the old version.