User blog comment:Rupert Giles/Global Navigation Update/@comment-4830337-20141205014425

I dislike the new navigation because of its looks which is, to put this honest, visually unappealing and more complicated than the previous bar. The white background of the bar does not match many wikis' layouts, which can makes it visually unpleasant, especially on wikis with dark backgrounds. It is also very demanding of your attention, which can be distracting for users who'd rather read the contents on articles and the likes.

There are some few changes that I do like, such as that the bar is in a fixed position (although my opinion is apparently not shared with other people), and the search bar is also included in the fixed navigation bar, allowing easy access to search right away (once again, my opinion is apparently not shared with other people). It also has the potential to be more visually appealing than the previous bar, had you allowed it to be color customized. I changed the colors of the navigation bar in my css in order to match with wikis, and I like it much better when it goes smoothly with the wiki's layouts.

As you will not change back to the old navigation bar, I'd suggest making some improvements such as:
 * Making the bar smaller in both the height and width (it takes up far more space than necessary - do it really need to be so large?)
 * Allowing the colors to be customized (the inability to customize the colors is easily one of the biggest problems with the bar)
 * Making the drop-down menus' contents' fonts and spaces smaller, so it'd take up less space on pages (the interwiki links drop-down menu takes up more than half of my screen!)
 * Moving the notifications to its own button, why would you force us to take a couple additional steps to the notifications?
 * Changing the circular avatar to a square one, or perhaps slightly rounded like the search bar, because as many others have already pointed out, nowhere else on the entire Wikia that actually uses circular avatars and most people's avatars are meant to be squared anyway
 * As another user suggested, make the "Search this wikia / Search all of Wikia" togglable with a single click instead of a drop-down menu, or at the very least, make the drop-down menu more visually appealing.
 * Remove the "Start a wikia" button from the navigation bar, since it'll be useless for most editors, and so easy for vandals to create spam wikis. I'd suggest relocating it to the interwiki links, but I'd rather you to completely remove the button from the bar.