

A New Top Bar for Stack Exchange - codegeek
http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2013/12/a-new-top-bar-for-stack-exchange/

======
dmunoz
One benefit they bring up is the site switcher, which is much nicer than the
old drop down they had. I have a question for people who participate on
multiple sites: do you need a separate account on each site? All I can recall
is that it was indeed the case in the past, but there was mumblings about them
making the system better for multiple site accounts. After a quick search,
questions like this [0] make me think it still isn't the case that there is a
universal account.

The real reason I ask is because I was bummed when they removed the ability to
filter by top questions per week or per month [1]. The justification given in
the response is fair enough, but I have never understood why, as a comment
there points out, they also removed the ability to manually filter by
?tab=(active|hot|week|month). The cynic in my thinks this was mainly to drive
people to signup for the weekly emails. The problem I have with that is I just
want to hit some sites once a month and see the top questions, some once a
week, etc. For example, I have no need to read the physics or mathematics
communities very often, but would love to read the top questions once a month.

So, it seems like the option is still there when you are signed in, but I have
never wanted to sign up an account for each site. Is my understanding of their
accounts system wrong?

[0] [http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/195849/how-can-i-
ful...](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/195849/how-can-i-fully-log-
out-of-all-stack-exchange-sites-so-i-dont-keep-auto-logging)

[1] [http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/180850/hot-and-
week-...](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/180850/hot-and-week-tabs-
not-shown-to-non-logged-in-users-except-on-so)

~~~
jeremyt
Stack overflow PM here.

The hot/active/week/month tabs were only removed for anonymous users. If
you're logged in at all, you will still see them. I think my meta-post covers
the reasons behind this (mostly simplification for drive-by users).

Also, we have put a lot of effort into simplifying our accounts management
over the last year. We're about halfway there, but at the moment we aggregate
site accounts under a global account. You'll have to take an affirmative
action to "join" another site, but it's not the whole registration process -
no separate username/email/password.

Bottom line is registration requires an email and password, and that gets you
the key to all of our sites. You just have to "use" the key on the site when
you interact the first time.

Also, I'll add that you could just go here:
[http://stackexchange.com/questions?tab=hot](http://stackexchange.com/questions?tab=hot)

~~~
dmunoz
Thanks for the reply. I think I covered some of those points in my post, but
thanks for clarifying.

I get the justification for removing the tabs. I admitted in my post that the
justification for the removal was fair enough. I, along with the other people
commenting in the meta post, just don't like that the behaviour is also
unavailable manually with e.g. ?tab=(active|hot|week|month).

As for having to login once but join every site, it's just a pain I was
unwilling to go through for the behaviour I wanted. As I admitted, this is my
loss and not any loss to stackexchange.

~~~
jeremyt
Well, it is a loss for us, but unfortunately it's just not technically
feasible to have a global seamless login experience yet. We're working in that
direction.

~~~
dmunoz
The reason I keep mentioning it as not being a loss to stackexchange is
because in the justification you say

> users who browse but never vote or post just aren't really that valuable,
> relatively speaking – except to encourage cross site discovery which we
> intend to incentivize in other ways.

and for the behaviour I desire I fit exactly the mould of a user who isn't
looking to vote or post. Okay, I might vote on the excellent responses, but on
the sites that I just want ?tab=week or ?tab=month behaviour from, I don't
want to ask questions.

------
talles
I... _hated_ it.

I don't get it exactly what problem this new bar is solving.

A let down is that will be out of place in some layouts. StackExchange got
beautiful layouts, like unix.stackexchange.com or cooking.stackexchange.com. A
big black bar up there will break the perfectness of those.

~~~
robrenaud
I think it's awesome.

You have a personalized and prioritized view into the other stackexchanges you
care about.

You can see reputation gains across all the stackexchange sites instead of the
one that you are currently on.

Of course, I'll agree that the stackexchanges themselves should have input
into how it's rendered on their own page, so as to prevent clashing.

------
mratzloff
_A Bigger, Blacker Bar_

Subtle reference to Cards Against Humanity. ;-)

------
sebkomianos
I find it _too_ black.

~~~
Rudism
It's like, how much more black could this be?

~~~
jere
It could be #000000. It's only #212121.

Personally, I don't like the amount of contrast between the near black and
grey text.

The text has a 67% L, the background a 13% L, and the difference is only
54%.... obviously only about half the contrast available.
[http://contrastrebellion.com/](http://contrastrebellion.com/)

------
iconjack
Thank God! They no longer whip the search box across the screen the moment I
enter a character. That was one of worst UX design choices I've seen. I know
they were just making room for a longer search string, but to yank it like
that gave me whiplash.

------
deletes
Have a problem?, just visit this site:
[http://stackexchange.com/sites#](http://stackexchange.com/sites#)

Stack Exchange is becoming the guide to everything.

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yconst
The new bar is so imposing compared to the rest of the interface.

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dimillian
The logo is pixelated on my Retina Macbook. It's a new bar and it's not even
retina. Can you fix it please? :)

~~~
jeremyt
Fixing...

------
minimalist
And yet it still requires a call to google's servers in order to function.
That's kind of disappointing.

