Navigating Facebook’s Blue Top Bar

By Carolyn Abram from Facebook For Dummies, 4th Edition

Facebook pages all have the big blue bar across the top of the page. The blue bar is home to many of the important navigational links on Facebook. And anytime you’re looking at a Facebook page, you’ll have the blue bar accompanying you, like a really loyal puppy. When you can adequately navigate the blue bar, you might as well kick off your shoes and put up your feet because you’ll undoubtedly be feeling right at home on Facebook.

Here's what you need to know about the blue bar links:

Facebook logo: The Facebook logo on the left of the blue bar serves two purposes. First, it reminds you what website you’re using. Second, no matter where you are on Facebook, if you click this icon, you’re back at the Facebook Home page.
Friend requests: Next to the Facebook logo is an icon of two people, intended to depict friends. Clicking this icon reveals a menu that shows you any pending friend requests you may have. Notice in the right corner that there’s also a link here that takes you to where you can find friends. Whenever you receive brand new friend requests, a little red number totaling the number of new requests shows up on top of this icon. When you view the new requests, regardless of whether you respond to them, the red flag goes away.
Messages: An icon depicting two speech bubbles lets you access your message Inbox. Clicking it shows you snippets from your five most recent messages, as well as links if you want to send a new message or go to your Inbox. As with the friend requests, a little red flag appears to show you how many new messages you have. When you click that flag, you see the new messages, and the flag clears.
Notifications: When someone on Facebook has taken an action that involves you or your timeline, you are notified by a red flag on top of the globe icon. Maybe the person has tagged you in a photo, posted to your timeline, or commented after you on a post. Click the globe to see the five most recent notifications, as well as a link to the rest.
Search: This search bar works as a search engine just for Facebook. You can use it to find people, groups, events, and applications on Facebook. As you start typing a search topic, a list of items begins to auto-complete. If you see the person or item you’re looking for, scroll down or use your mouse to select it. Pressing Enter automatically takes you to the top item in the list. Most of the time, you’ll use search to go directly to a friend’s timeline.
Timeline: The first link on the right side of the blue bar is your name and a thumbnail version of your timeline photo, which act as a link to your own Facebook timeline. You can get to your timeline by clicking your own name or photo wherever you see them on the site.
Home: This link works just like the Facebook logo. Wherever you are on the site, clicking it brings you back to the screen you see when you log in.
Find Friends (not shown; only for new users): This link takes you to a page that will help you find your friends. Once you have reached a certain number of friends, this link will disappear from the big blue bar on top.
Account menu (downward-facing arrow): Here’s a rundown of all the Account menu options:
- Help Center: Takes you to all sorts of tools for finding out how to use the site, how to stay safe on Facebook, and where to report a problem or bug with the site.
- Account Settings: Enables you to change your name, your e-mail address or password, your mobile information, or the language you want to use on the site. This is also where you go to deactivate your account.
- Privacy Settings: Enables you to set the visibility of the information in your timeline.
- Credits BalanceThis setting only appears if you’ve started using applications on Facebook that require Facebook credits as a form of payment.
- Log Out: Ends your Facebook session.