navbar adjustments and several unrelated fixes and updates

Joe, I know you were doing navbar stuff for the notification of project updates. Priority is definitely being able to simply view in the project listings the updates with number and bolding based on the user (i.e. the same older code), and showing a single per-user updates number in the navbar that adds up all the universal updates would be good. Minimum for just people seeing that there are updates is the priority. Tons of other things can be put in later.

Anyway, might as well merge my updates I think, although shouldn't be that related.