Yes, I preferred the pop-up window! Most instances still do that, it's only mastodon.social and a couple other big ones that use this new UI. I find it less convenient, and it also breaks addons like https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/mastodon-simplified-federation/ which redirect on the same page instead of in a pop-up. The add-on makes it almost a frictionless process - click on boost, the page loads in your instance, click on boost again, done. Having to switch tabs, choose the search box, paste the URL in, etc. is more of a mental context switch and feels more involved to me.