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I'll admit that when Stack Overflow changes their layout I usually don't like it at first. Sometimes the changes grow on me, other times they linger and fester at which point you either just have to give up or fix it with Stylebot. This brings me to the latest navigation changes and the stinking mess known as:

Top Questions

Enter image description here

What is the point of this giant piece of...text? It just sits there, taking up a ton of space. It doesn't even have the utility of being something as basic as a link. Furthermore, what does it mean, especially when over to the right of it lies "interesting", "featured", "hot", "week" and "month". Instead of "top", shouldn't it at least read "Interesting Questions", "Featured Questions", "Hot Questions", etc. to properly indicate what you're looking at, with "interesting" being the default?

There's a lot to pick on with this new navigation, but this "Top Questions" eyesore bugs me each and every time I load the page (yeah, yeah, I know, I should switch to decaf).

One could argue it serves no purpose at all and the navigation would be complete (and take up less space) without it.

And seeing at how responsiveness was a goal of this latest change, why don't the question categories fit neatly between "Top Questions" and "Ask Question"?

If I'm being too long-winded, maybe I can sum up the issue with a simple image:

Enter image description here

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  • Your question about the categories is addressed here: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/369275/… And, I'm guessing that answer might also at least hint at the header's font size, which I'm guessing is designed to match the "Ask question" button height.
    – Catija
    Commented Jun 13, 2018 at 22:19
  • 2
    Maybe a very small troll on a unicycle rides round that brick?
    – Martin James
    Commented Jun 13, 2018 at 22:20
  • 33
    No @MartinJames that's where the dinosaurs go: twitter.com/Kobi/status/1006784026982666241
    – Catija
    Commented Jun 13, 2018 at 22:21
  • 1
    @Catija lol....
    – Martin James
    Commented Jun 14, 2018 at 0:27
  • 23
    I often have a feeling that UI designers make layouts on 24 inch screen and these things make sense there, because otherwise there's too much information on a single screen and some spacing is needed, but when these interfaces are displayed on laptops, all those fillers are left in place and are extremely annoying! It seems like designers only target large workstations and mobile/tablets now, laptops are left behind :(
    – Ben Usman
    Commented Jun 14, 2018 at 3:31
  • "One could argue it serves no purpose at all and the navigation would be complete (and take up less space) without it." Well, you can't really argue that. Because even if you remove the text, the "Ask Question" box would be taking up the same amount of vertical space.
    – Nicol Bolas
    Commented Jun 14, 2018 at 5:18
  • 8
    the dinosaurs guy is spot on - the shape of that whitespace makes me uncomfortable.
    – Eaten by a Grue
    Commented Jun 14, 2018 at 6:45
  • @Catija Ha! It doesn't happen often that Twitter makes me happy :) Feature Request: add more dinosaurs to the site. Dinosaurs and unicorns, its just a natural unison.
    – Gimby
    Commented Jun 14, 2018 at 7:20
  • 1
    Without stylebot (or whatever you're using) it actually looks like this.
    – OrangeDog
    Commented Jun 14, 2018 at 10:34
  • 1
    Wait, do you call the title a pile of poo? 💩 💩 Or how to interpret the obligatory free hand circles?
    – Christian Gollhardt
    Commented Jun 15, 2018 at 0:21
  • 8
    Well now I can't un-see the dinosaurs.
    – BJ Myers
    Commented Jun 15, 2018 at 4:24
  • Mostly unrelated, (and I'm sure that this has been discussed somewhere) I really liked being able to see the most recent posts on SO, regardless of whether some SO algorithm thought that it would "interesting" to me. I really liked looking at the most recent questions, regardless of topic, but now I can only do that when I'm logged off.
    – lmo
    Commented Jun 15, 2018 at 22:54
  • Being tragically colourblind it took me a while to realize the point wasn't the lack of munchkins along the Yellow Brick Road.
    – user4581301
    Commented Jun 15, 2018 at 23:32
  • @OrangeDog The screenshot above is all SO, no stylebot.
    – j08691
    Commented Jun 18, 2018 at 18:28

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