# New header dropdown / notification menu styles

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-header-dropdown-notification-menu-styles/369574
**Category:** UX
**Tags:** feedback, design-experiment
**Created:** [June 10, 2025, 4:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-header-dropdown-notification-menu-styles/369574 "2025-06-10T16:49:41Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 54

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### Author: ![jordan.vidrine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/jordan.vidrine/32/515563_2.png) [@jordan.vidrine](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jordan.vidrine)
#### Post date: [June 13, 2025, 5:33pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-header-dropdown-notification-menu-styles/369574/54 "2025-06-13T17:33:11Z")

</div>

So at the moment, we really only have to different parts of Discourse using a “read/unread” styling state.

The other part in this menu is a “selected” state. This is to show the currently selected notification tab. In this iteration we are mimicking the selected state for sidebar items.

Here is a basic audit of the things we are looking at in the menu. Read, Unread, Selected

**Sidebar**  
For sidebar, we just indicate “unread” with a dot. “Read” is assumed by default if no blue dot exists.

 ![CleanShot 2025-06-13 at 10.53.03@2x](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/d/5/6/d5600fa0827245b6d67c7f5a88804941a993701b.png)

**Side bar - active**  
Here is the currently selected sidebar item, aka active.

 ![CleanShot 2025-06-13 at 10.56.42@2x](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/a/9/f/a9f7470901fdd6012716e18181fa6c81d0a5bb50.png)

**Topic List**  
For topic lists we currently show a blue dot && use color in the title & metadata to differentiate. One caveat is that we _dont_ show the blue dot on topics you are not following/watching. So whether the blue dot appears or not is not immediately clear to the user.

 ![CleanShot 2025-06-13 at 10.54.25@2x](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/8/2/b/82b473f94722c270a0eb8788f98c19e4079cdd80.png)

**Menus**  
We use `selected` as a state here to show active selection. I do not think this translates to notifications, but it _does_ translate to the selected state of the menu notifications current tab.

There are inconsistencies at the moment of what color we use for selected.

For tracking, we use grey.

 ![CleanShot 2025-06-13 at 10.57.38@2x](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/5/9/2/5923bebee16a15d3edf41a11e08f26fe0b477d08.png)

For currently selected category we use blue.

 ![CleanShot 2025-06-13 at 10.58.49@2x](https://global.discourse-cdn.com/meta/original/4X/f/0/4/f046fe31978a4b842d905725dbd5e237a6b24456.png)

**User Notifications page**  
This page needs some work in the current iteration.

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_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-header-dropdown-notification-menu-styles/369574)._