[xnickb]

Not sure what Googlebook is, but in general: I want to be able to move my pointer to the top right corner and click to close the window.

And before you make some claim like "use keyboard", the UI includes these window elements for a reason. Top bar makes them less friendly to use: They're tiny and with top bar it's an aiming game instead of a quick way to do something with a mouse or a touchpad.

As an i3/sway user I don't greatly care about this because I already have things the way I like, but I understand the frustration of the OP.

[functionmouse]

and I'd like to be able to move my cursor to the top edge of the screen to click tabs without worrying about where my cursor is on the y-axis, only x. we've completely forgotten about Hot corners and hot edges...

[maxloh]

There is actually a concept called Fitts' Law that just describes what you said.

When tabs are placed against the very top edge of the screen, the top edge effectively acts as a target with infinite height (Y-axis), making it very easy to reach.

Apple and Microsoft both apply this concept in their OS, just to different elements (close button or menu bar).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law

[xnickb]

Yeah, this is the extension of the above. Main reason tabbed windows ditched the title bar in favor of having tabs integrated into it.

Unfortunately people who design UI or produce specs are not power users so the end products have been losing utility at an incredible pace.

My personal favorite is an input field which clears its content once it loses focus. So when inputting an address on mobile you can't switch back and forth to copy different parts of it.