
How Stack Overflow Redesigned the Top Navigation - woliveirajr
http://stackoverflow.blog/2017/02/Why-Stack-Overflow-Redesigned-the-Top-Navigation/
======
nathcd
I like it! I just wish it weren't fixed. The design does indeed add clarity
and make it easier to quickly parse compared to the old nav. But it being
fixed makes it feel like a design that's trying to coerce me into staying on
the site longer. Which is fine (and more and more sites are doing this
anyway), but to me it makes Stack Overflow feel a little bit less like a tool,
and a little bit more like a company trying to subtly influence my behavior
for their profit. But I'm probably reading way too much into this.

~~~
kasparsklavins
Users aren't clicking on it? Better shove it in their face so it's noticed.

I like the solution of not showing the navbar unless the user scrolls up.

IMO, fixed navbars are almost as bad as popups.

~~~
nathcd
> I like the solution of not showing the navbar unless the user scrolls up.

Oh man, I've gotta strongly disagree with this. To me, those are just
distracting and in practice often end up being fidgety. For tall webpages I
think an easy and simple alternative is having a link like <a href="#">top</a>
at the bottom of the document or wherever it makes sense. Unfortunately it
seems like many designers don't really go for easy and simple.

~~~
Ajedi32
Eh, those links tend to be difficult to find and not very useful in my
experience. Usually it's not much harder to just scroll back to the top
manually.

Plus the "show on scroll up" bars have the advantage of making it easy to
access the top navigation without losing your place on the page, which is
useful if you just want to open a link from the top bar in a new tab or
quickly check your notifications or something.

------
yakshaving_jgt
Stack Overflow did well with this. Now I wonder if GitHub will chime in with
why they decided to redesign their header recently to, in my opinion, a
hideous design.

~~~
slig
The new black header on GH made me think someone famous has passed (like HN
did in the past).

~~~
serg_chernata
Same here, I spent good 10 minutes looking at their homepage and blog in hopes
of finding an explanation.

~~~
cormullion
I took another 5 minutes to find this useful add-on for Safari:

[https://freestyler.ws/style/152684/github-white-
header](https://freestyler.ws/style/152684/github-white-header)

------
liquidise
> _A /B Test with 5% of Anonymous Visitors_

> _A /B Test with 10% of Registered Users with Less than 500 Rep_

These headlines are the biggest lessons for devs in this article. I cannot
stress how valuable these anonymous, code-regulated tests are. Once your site
has reached any appreciable traffic size, invest some time into how you can
segment users for testing feature updates.

While we like to think all new features/updates are positive, the reality is
rarely so positive. Anonymous tests are a great way to improve your feature
offering without sacrificing the experience of all users.

------
ouid
What an idiotic premise, "the logo is the focal point of the page". No, the
question and answer are the focal point of the page. Did you learn nothing
from the thing that you claimed to have learned something from?

~~~
legostormtroopr
StackOverflow is making a whole host of bad decisions lately. I worry for
developers everywhere if they keep making missteps like this. Its not like
"free Q&A site" is a long-term sustainable business, especially if they keep
messing with users like they are.

~~~
brokenmachine
What are the other things they have done?

~~~
legostormtroopr
Made a poorly worded statement against the recent travel restrictions, that:

A. Alienated any non left or non-US members

B. Used their position to break their own rules

C. Told the community that they would do A and B again

In the process they alienated a lot of high rep users who are slowly leaving
the site. Myself included, who had my 20k+ account deleted.

[https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/342903/well-
always-...](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/342903/well-always-
endeavor-to-do-whats-right-well-try-to-do-it-better-next-time)

~~~
brokenmachine
You're leaving the site because of a single announcement you didn't agree
with?

 _> Myself included, who had my 20k+ account deleted._

What reason did they give for deleting your account?

Where's the original statement?

~~~
legostormtroopr
Multiple announcements that I didn't agree with, most of them, in my opinion,
focused on them setting a political orthodoxy for the site.

And I requested an account deletion, and from what I can tell I wasn't the
only one.

------
zurfyx
It looks great atm, now it matches the colors of the site. They even recently
added it a grey-er background color which makes it different from the content
background.

------
xbvp
There is a problem for those wanting to print the page.

The bar obscures text on consecutive pages.

This is an issue for Quora as well.

------
brokenmachine
Although I'm not a super-fan of the redesign (99% of the time I prefer words
to cryptic icons with hover text), I must say, I do love the openness of Stack
Overflow with their blog posts, etc.

It's nice to read about the design decisions that go into a large successful
site.

------
tofflos
Hello! Unsolicited armchair expert here!

I initially came here to say that I also prefer the new design but would
appreciate something non-fixed. I realize there's a setting for it but that
means I have to login just to get rid of it. Like most people I only read the
site. Then I sort of got stuck on the sentence in the article that suggested I
might be missing out on some of the things that Stackoverflow has to offer.

I believe I have fairly common workflow. I Google, read the question and all
the responses, then open all the referenced questions in new tabs and
recursively work my way through them until I have exhausted all the material
on the topic. You seem to be very familiar with that type of workflow. It's
even mentioned in the article.

But it's also a bit odd when I think about it. I can't recall that I have ever
visited Stackoverflow directly. For some reason I always come from Google.
Heck, I even type "stackoverflow" into the Google search bar so that your
results will come up on top. That's very different from my normal browsing
pattern. Usually I go to a site directly. So why am I doing this and what am I
missing out on? I decided to take a tour of your site!

1\. The front page isn't very useful to me. I believe you could make an
argument that it's not very useful to most people. It displays the new top
navigation bar, a large sign inviting me to sign up, lots of low quality
questions in wildly different areas less than a minute old. Maybe this is
useful to someone else. To me it's about as useful as if Google would show the
10 most recently indexed sites on their landing page.

2\. The top navigation bar didn't really seem to have anything interesting
until it struck me that I always search your site with Google. But there is a
search feature somewhere... Why is the search bar so small? Why isn't it more
prominent? Oh, and it's possible to browse for more interesting topics using
tags. I do that sometimes. Why don't I do that more often? Also I should
contribute more to Stackoverflow. Why don't I do that?

...

So if you want to change my behavior to be someone who goes to your landing
page, searches using your search feature, browses by categories, and monitors
familiar topics - then I suggest you try some of the following things:

1\. Make searching and browsing topics the focus of the landing page. (The
Google search bar isn't "hidden" in the top navigation)

2\. Remember which topics I'm interested in without requiring me to login.

3\. Change the font on Windows to Segoe UI. ;-)

4\. Change the header to be non-fixed without requiring me to login.

Currently you're just a place where the search results are stored. But I have
a hunch that if I'm actively coming to your site and using your services, then
I would be more likely to register, login and participate. It would perhaps
strengthen my impression of a community. I make no guarantee that my
suggestions will work but you could A/B test it using the method described in
the article. :)

Thank you for Stackoverflow and keep up the good work!

~~~
pitaj
This is an excuse for them making the top menu fixed, but here's a personal
fix. You can use a userstyle extension like Stylish. You can then add the
following style:

    
    
        .so-header {
          position: static !important;
          min-width: 1090px !important;
          box-shadow: none !important;
        }

------
kleiba
Damn, that update renders StackOverflow unsuable in Firefox 3.6.18pre :-(

~~~
urda
That's an unsupported Firefox release and has nothing to do with Stack
Overflow. Upgrade your browser and try again.

Site works fine in the latest Stable and Developer Editions.

~~~
kleiba
Well, I think you guys need to update your irony detectors and try again! ;-)

