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Is it just me, or did the top bar get a bit lighter? Using DigitalColorMeter for Mac, I measured the color of the top bar, and measured it at rgb(47,47,47), or #2F2F2F. Then, looking at pictures of the bar on Meta, like the ones here, I measured it at rgb(33,33,33), or #212121. This shocking new development will change everything, and I, personally, am completely terrified by this bar as opposed to the old bar

I believe this is a conspiracy to make people integrate the new bar into their lives, and then, when we're least expecting of it, the SO Dev team, full of Grinches wanting to ruin our Christmases, will make it truly black, and even Jin will have nothing to say about it.

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It didn't get lighter, per se, but it got slightly transparent. Check out http://scifi.stackexchange.com, and note the opacity. I can see the background slightly through the bar now. In fact, Jin fessed up to making this change on the SFF meta site.


enter image description here

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can we stop over-engineering SO and put it back the way it was? it's still too dark on dark and difficult on the eyes... it's like they've got no designers over there... –  SnakeDoc Dec 7 '13 at 23:11
More transparency => less contrast => less readability. On sites with white background, the bar fits in smoothly anyways. However, on sites with warm background (TeX, SA, ELU, ...), 20% of transparency won't make it look any better. –  yo' Dec 8 '13 at 20:09
@tohecz No, but 30% transparency makes a huge difference. (I've been using a user stylesheet that adds 30% transparency to the original #212121 "black" since the bar was introduced.) The topbar on TeX, SA, and ELU looks much better with 30% transparency; it seems to cross a threshold where the "black" starts being significantly blended with the background colours. It's a contrast compromise though, yes. –  SevenSidedDie Dec 14 '13 at 0:01

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