Is there any way to get the old design to Top Sites back?

There's no simple way to change it, short of reverting to an earlier Safari & supporting frameworks if on Lion or Mountain Lion. That's not just swapping Safari apps, but using a backup that contained all the altered files, or (see other posts here) reinstalling OS X via Internet Recovery, if that doesn't include the newest Safari.

I completely agree, on Safari and the 80's mustang. Right now I can't decide which looks worse. It's amazing that apple thinks this is an improvement. It not only redefines ugly, it's actually more difficult to read and is less functional with no cursor highlight. Come on Apple, get real. I look forward to when they get past this hyper-minimalist phase and realize that a little reflection and depth goes a long way.

It does no good venting here as we are all end-users often with the same feeling about a new "feature."

This is your path for making your concerns known to Apple:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/safari.html

You're right Allen, thanks for the reminder and the link.

😎

I totally agree, it's reeeally ugly and very strange to go backwards in design like this, it actually looks like a mistake or bug or as you said, a Windows design but even that would be very old Windows! Do you think it really was done to save memory and or speed or something?

My laptop still has old version but iMac has new and seeing the two side by side is quite the sight. The "new" design looks like some very old OS from 20 years ago and the old one looks modern and "easy on the eyes" as we expect from Apple in 2013. How is that possible?? These kinds of backwards changes just leave me totally perplexed.

Yes, I filled out feedback form, I always do with these occasional bad designs that Apple makes sometimes, hopefully it helps. Actually, it DOES help me to vent here too, misery loves company... lol... but feedback form does help more.

btw, I've owned nothing but Apple since my first computer around 1996 and love them but they make mistakes too.

Hahahahaha, and there was me thinking my daughter had done something to my iMac whilst surfing and no, it's a deliberate act from Apple. It only slightly bothered me until today when I surfed for the answer. Oh well.