Google Quietly Rolls Out New Header Bar Navigation

Yesterday Google updated the way their navigation bar works across some of their services.  They’ve streamlined the link tabs on the left side of the bar, and on the right-side there is a new gear button that provides a new drop-menu feature.  Have you seen it yet?

The old Gmail and Google navigation bar featured a set of underlined links in a bold font.  It was the same on both the left and right side.

The new look drops the bolded lettering in favor of clean and plain text with a bold blue line floating above your current page.  You can see this on Google’s homepage www.google.com, and some of its offerings.

So far it looks like most of Google is still on the old look, but as of today the services with the updated look are:

• Google Gmail
• Google search
• Google Realtime
• Google Maps
• Docs

As said, the right side has seen the most dramatic change.  When I first opened up Gmail I wondered what happened to my Settings button, but it wasn’t hard to find.  Instead of the links shown across right of the navigation bar, there is a new HTML5 powered drop-down-menu that contains all of the familiar options from the old header.

Overall, I think it is a great change, as I can now run two Google services side-by-side in the same window without the header’s being squished into themselves!