User blog comment:Rupert Giles/Introducing Updated Global Navigation/@comment-24.192.41.216-20141206140631

I also don't like the top bar, it takes up too much screen space (easily a quarter of my window vertically, it doesn't even fit on my monitor horizontally (1600x900), it has graphical glitches).

I don't see any added functionality and I don't see any reason why they couldn't have just stuck it at the top of the page. They could have also made it auto hide but I'd prefer it at just the top because auto hide on most sites gets really glitchy.