From a reader's pov it's reassuring Medium looks like it's in for the long run, hopefully continuing to evolve in the fullness of time. The reading diversity on this site is excellent.

So I see the 4 icons on the bottom of the chrome tab on the mac desktop, that's fine. I think I've seen the same group of icons on the left margins in recent days, but not sure where those icons are going to end up when the current changes settle down. On the main Medium site file there's this green dot that I guess is the new notifications icon notifier for the account holder in the upper right. So yeah, so far it seems cleaner especially reading notifications that depending on where one is, goes to the full page. That's nice.

I assume Medium will add or lock in more changes as they become stable.