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Came to the Parenting site and it took a while to find the search functionality. This blends into the top bar so much it would certainly take forever to find the search window being hidden in plain sight.

Also, the Font color for "Search on Parenting" does not help either. Screenshot of top bar on Parenting

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    Apologies for bouncing this around. This may mention Parenting but it's not specific to that site. The top bar is the same everywhere except Stack Overflow/Meta Stack Overflow so belongs on MSE. – Catija♦ May 13 '19 at 2:25
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    While these fancy CSS effects are considered modern maybe the quickest win is to always show the search button, not only when the textbox gets the focus. – rene May 13 '19 at 6:29
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    Going to be completely honest... I've got about a 50/50 chance of ending up clicking in the browser's address bar instead of the search field. – Catija♦ May 13 '19 at 13:58
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    @catija bounced around 2 times already. Closed as off topic multiple times. And now -3, it’s really a draining experience trying to get the message across. – pal4life May 13 '19 at 15:26
  • @pal4life Apologies for that. I do think this is an issue... It's worth noting that many people are confused about how our meta sites work... MSE can be difficult to find and MSO - for developers, anyway - is much easier, so I can understand why you would have posted this there. Regardless of the votes, I'll see if we can look at whether we're rendering this in the best way we can. – Catija♦ May 13 '19 at 15:46
  • This is true on all sites, as far as I can tell. I've been using SE sites for years, and I think this is relatively new. At least it always takes me a while to find the search field. – sgf May 14 '19 at 8:18
  • @pal4life Not so bad now. :) – Catija♦ May 14 '19 at 23:52
  • @Catija yep when the wheels of the machine work it’s great but aren’t we usually rated on our worst 😀, Jk – pal4life May 14 '19 at 23:53
  • @Catija thanks for all your help – pal4life May 14 '19 at 23:53
  • By the way I noticed another bug while using the iOS app - what’s the right place to report? – pal4life May 14 '19 at 23:54
  • Here! iOS stuff is on topic here. Be sure to search first. Also, we're not actively developing for the app but we're still fixing critical bugs for the time being. – Catija♦ May 14 '19 at 23:55
  • Here was the question I had, it’s listed as bug - meta.stackexchange.com/q/302840/191696 – pal4life May 14 '19 at 23:59
  • FYI it used to be white, but was made black as a result of this request. Why they implemented a +8/-3 request over one of the more highly-voted answers there baffles me, though. (I also happen to be one of the three downvoters there) – Sonic the Curiouser Hedgehog May 15 '19 at 0:29
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    @meganrisdal I'm sorry but how exactly is this [status-completed]? Because on my end nothing seems to have changed. – rene Jul 10 '19 at 6:32
  • @rene Sometimes tags get added a bit before the build goes out. The design decision was to avoid the stark white in Shog's suggestion in preference for making the "search on [sitename]" contrast higher by using a lighter text color. There's also now a search magnifying glass symbol. This change is live currently. – Catija♦ Jul 10 '19 at 15:58
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I have to agree - it's terribly hard to pick out at a glance, and my eyesight is pretty good. Compare with Stack Overflow, where it has a nice white background like all the other textfields:

Search box in top bar on SO - grey text on white background

It'd be one thing if the rest of the site had a dark theme - there'd be less contrast overall between the top-bar and the rest of the page, and a grey box might jump out a bit more readily... But with the big field of white below, greys and blacks just kinda blur together.

Here's what it'd look like on other sites if it had a white background:

Search box here on meta, but with a white background

To see this yourself, here's a one-line script to paste into your console:

$(".top-bar .js-search-field").css("background-color", "white")

Could readily do the same with user CSS if desired.

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    During the early days of this top bar, it used to be white, but was made black as a result of this request here. I don't get why they'd implement a +8/-3 request over one of the more-voted, same-difficulty ones. Can it please be reverted? – Sonic the Curiouser Hedgehog May 15 '19 at 1:55

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