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Google Mobile’s New Slide Out Black Navigation Bar

Barry Schwartz on October 10, 2012 at 5:32 pm

Google launched a new mobile interface for navigating various Google services. Now if you load Google on your smartphone, you will see a menu icon made up of three lines. When you tap it with your finger, a black navigation bar will slide out from the left of the screen.

Here is a screen shot:

The navigation bar has an independent scroll from the rest of the page. This allows you to preview the right side of the Google page and scroll up and down the navigation bar to see more Google services. Clicking on the navigation icon will slide the navigation bar back to the left of the screen, removing it from view.

In February we spotted a similar test, with a drop down black bar on the mobile site. That test never became a reality but it is fairly close to this implementation.

I believe this is now live for all smart phone users but I will reach out to Google to confirm international rollout.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.