Facebook is testing a fixed top navigation bar on its website. As you can see in the screenshot above, a small subset of users are reportedly seeing an omnipresent blue bar on the social network, according to Inside Facebook. Even when they scroll down, they still have access to friend requests, messages, notifications, the search bar, the homepage link, the profile link, and the account link.
Some users say that the floating navigation bar change was only temporary. It’s possible Facebook simply wanted to gauge reactions from users; in other words, the company was trying to see if users clicked the top navigation buttons more frequently when it was fixed to the to the top of the webpage.
This is very similar to the separately-scrolling News Feed the company began testing back in June. That tweak made everything immobile except for the News Feed, while this change makes keeps everything movable except for the top navigation bar.
It’s worth noting that both Google+ and Twitter have their navigation bar fixed at the top of the browser window. If Facebook ends up rolling out this change to all of its 750 million active users, it will mean you almost rarely ever have to scroll to the top of a Facebook webpage again. This could prevent some people from leaving Facebook after they finish looking at something since the navigation bar is what holds the service together.
See also:
- Facebook testing homepage with separate News Feed scrolling
- Facebook testing summary notification e-mails
- Facebook testing a translate feature for comments (rumor)
- Facebook testing two new mobile security features
- Facebook testing homepage with separate News Feed scrolling
- Facebook starts testing check-ins for Events
