menu-button's always have the vertical separator between the button and menu button It used to be that when the user hovered over the left side of the button that the separator would appear to inform the user that the menu was not going to be opened when the user clicked the button and the separator would disappear when the user hovered over the menu portion of the button to inform the user that the clicking the button would open the menu portion of the button. Now that the separator is constantly there even on non-hover, users now always have the visual distraction of the separator on the buttons and gives the perception of a smaller click area for both actions. This separator always showing also gives the perception of two separate buttons stuck together and also doesn't flow with the theme of the new toolbar buttons with less distraction. Attaching a screenshot showing non-hover state. There isn't a point of doing showing the two hover states since you can barely see the hover animation..

(In reply to comment #0) > Now that the separator is constantly there even on non-hover, users now always > have the visual distraction of the separator on the buttons and gives the > perception of a smaller click area for both actions. This seems to indicate that the border gives a wrong perception. But it reveals the actual click areas for two distinct actions.

Yes, it does give two distinct actions but so did the old way which looked A LOT better. Lets look at the toolbar when the mode is set to 'icons and text' mode. These buttons would look a lot better with no separator.