Topic on Talk:Compact Personal Bar

1. For me it's a deterioration, that you now have a longer mouse way to get to Preferences, even as an advanced user, that's an often used page for me. So I'd like to get an direct icon for that.
2. In contrast to that I only need the notifications icon, if I have a new notification.
3. if I read articles etc. and I click once on the notification icon, I expect it to open as a small box, so that I can take a quick look at my notifications and go easy back, read my articles (as it does if I edit somewhere). Instead a click opens the notifications page. Maybe it's an option, to open the small box if I click once, and if I click a second time to open the notification page.
4. on the expendable options, there is a link to "new messages (none)" this is not necessary, if there are no new messages, I don't need a link to it.
5. I think the order of the links is not good solved. The first few options are already clickable icons, I could easy go to them, without opening the menu. In contrast, the option Preferences is far down, and has so an unnessesary long mouse way.

I'm sorry you find it to be worse than the current state of things. From our analysis of how users use the current links in the personal bar we've found there to be no real difference in the access frequency from users who are using the compact personal bar and those that aren't and while I agree that its a little bit more mouse moving its still one click away, but I understand your point. From looking at the frequency at which we see users accessing options in the personal bar, preferences is access pretty infrequently. Thats why it didn't seem to need a presence outside of the dropdown.

That might be the case of you, however many users use notification as a means of getting to their old notifications, additionally this is similar to how notifications work on pretty much every web application with a notification works, so I don't think it would make sense for us to differ from this pattern.

The echo (notifications) flyout not overlaying on the current page is a bug tracked T66862 here already.

The "new messages (none)" showing when a user has enabled compact personal bar is a bug tracked here T69750 already.

There are other threads here on the talk page, where people are talking about icon ordering. The current order is based on the way things are ordered and the frequency that people are accessing tools now. Feel free to propose alternate ordering, but please know that the current ordering is based on common usage data which might be different from yours.

Thanks for the feedback!