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Google's New Drop Down Menu To Navigation
Many of you must have noticed it by now. The new Google menu bar! We bet youre wondering if this is just another Google design experiment? Well the news is that this redesign is here to stay (at least for a little while).
Google has bid adieu to its horizontal black navigation bar at the top of the page and has introduced a new drop-down menu right under the Google logo which contains all the essential Google properties like Maps, News, Translate, Gmail and the remaining services clumped under the 'More' tab.
Google have announced this change as part of the next stage of their redesign, the new menu bar has a more consistent & streamlined look that allows users to quickly navigate between the Google services and share their experiences on Google+ with people on their Google Circles.
Here's how it looks:
This new navigation bar is not only compact with all the necessary Google services listed on it but also frees up some additional space on the top of your screen. Google have also added some new services to the menu bar that were not included in the previous version including Google Wallet, Google Offers, Google Music, Google Mobile and Blogger to name a few.
And do you want to know a secret trick to this toolbar? By mousing over the Google logo you will get access to Gmail, Google Docs and other select services.
Google says the change will be rolling out "over the next few days," so it might take a little for your black toolbar to disappear.
If you cannot wait till then, follow these instructions to try the new toolbar menu:
- If you use Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer 8+, open google.com in a new tab
- Load Chrome's JavaScript console (Ctrl+Shift+J), Firefox's Web Console (Ctrl+Shift+K), Safari's Web Inspector or IE's Developer Tools (press F12 and select the "console" tab) and paste the following code:
document.cookie="PREF=ID=03fd476a699d6487:U=88e8716486ff1e5d: FF=0:LD=en:CR=2:TM=1322688084:LM=1322688085:S=McEsyvcXKMiVfGds; path=/; domain=.google.com";window.location.reload();
- Then press Enter and close the console. If you're not in the US and you're using a different Google domain, replace ".google.com" with your domain in the code (for example: ".google.co.uk" in the UK). Please note that this only works for the English interface.
Google has also released a video that demonstrates the new drop down menu which you can view below.
About the Author:
Rene is the marketing manager of ineedhits.com - a global search engine marketing company. He also leads the marketing for Gooruze.com - a web 2.0 style community for online and digital marketers. Rene has been in the industry since 1997 with much of that time spent helping businesses embrace the best of the internet and digital world.