Now that I had a reason to go back to CTA1 again, here are other things I liked...
(1) how it keeps the window settings with the project file, unlike CTA3 where I have to stretch it out every time.
(2) the floating timeline (but not stretchable enough) - I have plenty of real estate spread across three monitors, so I would like to be able to make use of it.  Automatically expanding the CTA3 timeline vertically (I hate scrolling) would be a nice option, as would undocking it altogether.

Thanks for listening!

Apologies for item (2)!  I just learned how to dock and undock the various panels...