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I'm starting to appreciate the black bar more and more. At first I was skeptical, but it fits their new designs pretty well.

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That's the worse part of their design so far. The gray text is hard to read and the black bar is distracting on a otherwise light page.

> gray text is hard to read and the black bar

That's a conscious design choice.

In the visual hierarchy on the page, the links at the top are secondary to the main content. So it's better to have them faded out so your eyes aren't drawn to them.

Fading out the links is all well and good, but that only works when the bar itself doesn't draw your eyes to it. On my browser (uncostomized Google Chrome), it is by far the most distinctive element on my screen.

I find Facebook's blue header far more distracting than Google's dark grey one. But noone really complains about that. Maybe because they are used to it.

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