I agree with you somewhat about the buttons. Also, I think the size of the buttons has been 'forced' somehow, Because under some of my XP visual styles, the button text no longer fits on the button... Under Classic all is ok.

I didn't presume mIRC had been worked on for a full year , I did anticipate more changes though. I expected that some dialog controls would be added also. Not because I want them added, but because I want them out of the way and off Khaled todo list, so he can work on interesting stuff like Arrays and For loops. Alas, we will have to wait longer for those things while Khaled works on the MDX type stuff now.
Oh well a large part of dissapointment is due to the fact that we never know what is being worked on or what to expect, we are left to wonder.

The first thing I didn't like was not being able to drag my switchbar around anymore, but I can get used to that.
I also played around with clicking and dragging the toolbar as the grips suggested that something should happen. Nothing happens.

I like the idea of the Color schemes thing though, and the debug switch that passes the line to the alias could be useful.
It is hard to pin-point what exactly is the major new addition to this version?