You say you don’t like fullscreen mode, but with those toolbars off, and no tabs (at the top) which is probably the default, then the menus are hidden (you RH click to get at them).
You still see the scroll bar on the right, but that is the only thing. You can change the background colour of the command (input) part of the window).
One possibility would be to run a virtual machine. In fact that is how I maintain the client these days. I use Oracle VirtualBox since my main PC is Ubuntu. It runs under Windows, Mac and Linux, and is free.
You would then just need an old XP installation disk. There must be millions of them around, and you maybe have one yourself in a drawer. They are on eBay for around the $3 mark if you don’t have one.
On my (reasonably fast) PC the XP machine boots in around 21 seconds, and I usually leave it running. If you have a multiple CPU machine the virtual machine can use one of those CPUs (when it needs to) so you don’t really notice a slowdown elsewhere.
I think Fiendish also runs that way (but on a Mac as I recall). Or maybe he uses Wine.
In the virtual machine you can then customize the theme as I described earlier, without any fiddling around with the client.
I know for a fact that the client still runs on XP because that is what I test on. It is not a resource hog, and doesn’t use much disk.
You can full-screen the virtual machine, so you don’t need to worry about the Windows menus, desktop, etc. being a distraction.
The virtual machine captures the mouse and keyboard, so in full-screen mode while it is running it is easy to forget you are really running a different operating system. You use a special sequence (Press RH-shift, release it, then Alt+Tab in my case) to “escape” from the virtual machine if you hear a mail notification or something from the other operating system.
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