I'm afraid I retired the "per-secondary-structure-element" stepping mode some time back - it was always just a bit too flaky for my liking. I guess it wouldn't be too difficult to add a command with the equivalent functionality... but could you expand on what you dislike about the new mode? There are a couple of options to the "isolde step" command that might help you tweak it more to your liking: "interpolateFrames {integer}" will set the number of frames used in the "sliding" animation - the default is 15; I often set it to 5 when working through a big model; 1 will cause it to simply jump instantly to the next residue. "viewDistance {float}" will set the distance in Angstroms between residue and camera (default is 10). For both of these it will remember the last value you set.

Best,

Tristan