I did go to left nav link and turned off left nav panel as instructed (with some difficulty). But now I can't navigate at all - my work flow is to go back to the question list after looking at a question. The back button isn't always the best way to do that.
(Perhaps this should have been a comment - perhaps it's even been discussed above and I didn't follow instructions before posting - but felt I had to vent right away.)
Edit with more information.
Someone kindly pinged me to tell me about the button on the upper left that gives me navigation (back to questions). Thanks.
Next beef. The question list (without the nav bar) lists hot network questions on the right, as it used to and should. But they now take up nearly half the screen width. If I increase font size (Firefox) to trade for a willingness to scroll the question font increases (good) and the hot question list disappears entirely ...