That gray-black horizontal bar at the top of this page is a new feature Blogger™ added yesterday afternoon without fanfare: I refreshed my page at one point, and bam, there it was. Huh?

Apparently, it replaces the dynamic advertising bar that used to appear at the top of many free Blogger™ pages, although it hasn't cropped up on any of my other sites yet. I didn't care for the original color it came in - Blogger Blue, to wit - so I changed the color scheme to Black, which blends in nicely with the current farkleberries design.

But, as they say, is it any good? Well, since I don't have a say in the matter, I'll confess the jury's still out. The NavBar offers (looking left to right) a link to the Blogger™ main page, a search box that lets you find locate pages within a blog by keyword (caveat: this only appears to work right now when "Post Pages" are enabled, i.e., when the keyword(s) appear in the post's permalink rather than the post body), a BlogThis! button that allows Blogger™ users to instantly post to their blogs a link to the page being viewed (caveat: as long as it's a Blogger™ page, as the BlogThis! Javascript link doesn't seem to function when dragged to your browser's links or bookmarks), and finally the "Get Your Own Blog!" and "Next Blog" buttons.

The former is a wisely placed ad-link that prompts viewers to sign up for their own Blogger™ accounts, while the latter functions as a "random site" webring button - with the ring being all recently updated Blogger™ sites. That's a pretty darned big ring. I've clicked through the "Next Blog" several times with mixed results - after about 8 to 10 clicks you land on a Blogger™ page that lacks the NavBar, and you're stuck, because there is no corresponding "Previous Blog" button.

Ah, well. It's led lots of unlikely visitors to my site...but let me tell you - there are some weird, weird blogs out there. *shudder*

UPDATE: Blogger™ Help has a page discussing the new NavBar features, and thanks to Talk About GMail for the link!

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