Way back, a little while after its initial launch, the top bar was given a nice subtle but not-too-subtle alpha transparency which showed off our header art just that little bit more. It appears to have disappeared been much reduced recently. I notice the same at Science Fiction & Fantasy, where the transparency looks/ed fantastic with their particular header art, but now shows just the faintest smudge in-line with the brightest part of the background.
Inspecting the CSS, it seems to be set at 0.86 opacity. I at first thought that it was bugged and rendering wrong, but zooming in I can see a few faint pixels of background showing through here, and the aforementioned smudge at Sci-Fi.se, so it just must have been a lower opacity before. Fiddling with it a bit and eyeballing the results, I think it used to be 0.6–0.7 opacity.
Can we get some of that greater transparency back? Please, with cherries on top? It was one of my favourite visual touches on the site, making that network-wide bar integrate oh so much better with the site design. The current setting might as well be full opacity for how little it shows.