Oh no. Oh HELL no. In keeping with the new look of Google Docs, Reader etc., they've added an extra 40px of useless, un-necessary vertical padding to the bar. While their intro video criticises the old bar for wasting precious screen real estate, this new bar wastes more than twice as much of it.
I hope that some day soon they wake up and realise that screen real-estate shouldn't be wasted the way they're doing. As it stands, the only way I can now use Reader is by Greasemonkeying the hell out of its stylesheets; on my small laptop screen, many of the rest of Google's services are now all but unusable for me. This "stylistic cohesion" that they're aiming for is driving me away from every Google product out there.
Not really. Currently there's the black navbar AND the product specific search. This change is making the current product specific search the universal navbar, so at the end of it you've stilled gained the space occupied by the black nav bar.
I hope that some day soon they wake up and realise that screen real-estate shouldn't be wasted the way they're doing. As it stands, the only way I can now use Reader is by Greasemonkeying the hell out of its stylesheets; on my small laptop screen, many of the rest of Google's services are now all but unusable for me. This "stylistic cohesion" that they're aiming for is driving me away from every Google product out there.