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The newly updated top bar has come with a change that's kind of inconvenient on mobile: the “Stack Exchange” logo is full width always, and this squeezes out the site switcher, requiring people to scroll to find it (if a scroll indicator is even visible to suggest that they can do this).

Although we have circumstantially had issues with this kind of thing (The top bar is a little too full for moderators on mobile), previously the Stack Exchange logo would compress just to the little speech-bubble icon to not eat up this space.

Speaking personally, the site switcher's probably my single most frequently used button on this sidebar—it's how I move to other sites or chat or meta given none of that is available in the sidebar menu found in the left hamburger—so it's not great that this is happening!

new top bar with a wide "Stack Exchange" logo. only search, profile, inbox, achievements, and reviews are visible. help is slightly visible.
top bar scrolled across to find help and site switcher

Screenshots are from Firefox 99.1 on an Android 12.

In Android Chrome 99 there's a visible scroll indicator:

chrome: chunky scrollbar below the icons, pushing them upward

The focus here though is not whether people know they can scroll or not, it's that nobody should have to on account of this logo taking up so much space.

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  • The scroll indicator is much more obvious now. Still not the best UX, though.
    – Mithical
    Commented Mar 30, 2022 at 12:02
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    @Mithical I don't see any indication that I can scroll the top bar whatsoever. Certainly there's a platform-defined mini scroll bar after I start scrolling.
    – doppelgreener
    Commented Mar 30, 2022 at 12:02
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    This is what I see on page load: i.sstatic.net/vsPaF.jpg
    – Mithical
    Commented Mar 30, 2022 at 12:07
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    @Mithical It looks like we're seeing system-defined behaviour: your system shows a scrollbar, mine doesn't. This wouldn't be a Stack feature, so not everyone will see the same thing.
    – doppelgreener
    Commented Mar 30, 2022 at 12:15
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    The worst thing about this is that the giant StackExchange logo button is truly pointless for anyone who is already a signed up member. It takes up the most space, and it has nothing useful in its drop down! Can it just be removed if you're logged in?
    – curiousdannii
    Commented Mar 30, 2022 at 12:26
  • @Mithical same here
    – AncientSwordRage
    Commented Mar 30, 2022 at 12:36
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    Related: Change the way log in and sign up buttons (in header) appear in mobile.
    – Sebastian Simon
    Commented Mar 30, 2022 at 12:36
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    We're getting sidetracked. The scrolling being visible or not isn't the issue. The scrolling being required at all is the issue.
    – doppelgreener
    Commented Mar 30, 2022 at 13:28
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    Funny, my screen is actually wide enough to see all the standard icons, but just small enough that i still get a visible scrollbar for those last few pixels
    – Jo King
    Commented Mar 30, 2022 at 15:41

2 Answers 2

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This issue has now been fixed. The styling that collapses the logo down to the icon is... a bit of a hack. This hack was in place in the CSS, but was not properly taking effect due to some html changes. Additionally, we have a short-term fix in place for the double scrollbars on mobile, with a longer term fix merged in the Stacks library upstream.

Regarding there being no visible scroll indicator on Firefox, this is not something that I can fix. By default, Firefox mobile will show the scroll bars on page load, then fade them out. I searched for a solution to make this scrollbar always show (such as a Firefox-specific css property), but unfortunately I came up empty-handed.

mobile screenshot Example screenshot from the smallest breakpoint in the Chrome responsive device tools.

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  • 1
    Thanks for the fix! It's working well on my end.
    – doppelgreener
    Commented Apr 1, 2022 at 17:01
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When I'm logged out on mobile (Chrome on Android) I see two horizontal scroll bars, one scrollbar for icons that you can't use when you are logged out (they show a message when tapped with some information what the icon is for and a "sign up or log in" link), and one for the Log in and Sign up buttons. My phone is somewhat basic (Samsung J3) but not ancient, so I'm guessing there are more users that see both scroll bars.

I'm not sure what the solution is (other than reverting to the old mobile view) but this surely cannot be intended.

enter image description here

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