Hmm. I'm not actually sure that the new menu does save space, although I can't quite remember how it was before, i think all the options were in a single line. Now, when I want to look for new posts, I have to mash on the menu link, then select New, whereas before, I only had to mash the New link.

Edit: I've just tried Minimalist Black in Firefox on my Mac, and I reckon you could read the text from the moon