A belated thank-you for the responses. I've been out-of-game for some time now(yeah...intuitive UIs are vitally important for my ability to play a game. Partly the same reason Macs render computers unusable for me; I don't get the UI), but I had an idea that may make the setup perfect for me again. Although maybe I'm misunderstanding the details of what y'all are saying.
My thought was this: I read elsewhere that Plugins and the sort can only add new UI elements, not make sweeping changes to old ones. Makes sense, although I wish it wasn't the case...
Now...would it be possible to create a new button on the UI that, when pressed, opens a menu with the appearance and functionality of the old character screen? Or is the premise of these "UI elements" things that are constantly displayed? Or that some of the required information cannot be added to said elements? Or even that tabbed "browsing" is impossible to set up given the materials?