Philip Turpin

I logged in to Facebook, the other day, and saw the User Interface (UI) change right before my eyes.  It seems that Facebook are rolling out a new and improved UI in stages (my other Facebook account is, as yet, untouched.

To start with, the navigation bar, across the top, has been re-designed.

As you can see it’s been changed relatively comprehensively.   For me the two most noticeable (and annoying features) are:  The search bar has been moved to just left of the centre and you can no longer hover over the links on the top to get extra options.

As an example, in the old Facebook UI, you would hover over the ‘Inbox’ link to display a rop down box with 2, further options, of ‘View Inbox’ and ‘Compose Message’.  Under the new UI hovering has no effect.  You have to click to display the drop down box where the further options as shown.

Clicking on the Messages link gives a nice overview of the most recent messages on your inbox, from place you can choose to click on a message, compose a message or ’see all’ messages which takes you to the Inbox page.

There are two new links that side beside the Messages links which are Notifications and Requests.

The Notifications link acts in exactly the same manner as the Messages link and requires a click in order to display the drop down box as show below:

Again, you can click on an individual status to be taken to a page to view it in it’s entirety or you can click the ’see all’ link to be taken to the main notifications page.

The last of the 3 links is to display Requests (such as friend requests).  Again, exactly the same format where a click is required to display the drop down box.

My initial impression of this new layout technology is that it didn’t work.  The notifications don’t seem to be very responsive anymore.  Quite a lot of the time I have to manually check for new notifications and only then do I find out there are some.  The old style of notification, bottom right of the screen, worked much better and was more responsive.  Since drafting this post I have found that, in order to get a true notification (a little red number) you have to hit F5 refresh in the browser as clicking on ‘home’ to refresh the page is simply not enough.  Is that deliberate or an oversight I wonder?

It’s taking me some time to get used to the positioning of the new search bar.  There must be a reason why it’s been put there but I fail to see what.  Once could argue that it’s more inline with where you’d normally expect to find a search bar but, having been used to the Facebook search bar being on the top right, for so long I find it’s merely an annoyance while I get used to it.

I like the format of the new drop down boxes for Messages, Notifications and Requests but I don’t like the fact I have to click on them – a simple hover would be better and would be far more helpful when learning the new system.

The main feed has now been bordered by two vertical, thin, lines.  This helps improve visibility and concentrates the eye better.

Whereas, before, we had links for the applications on the bottom of our screen, we now have what are called ‘bookmarks’ on the left hand side as a navigation bar.  Apart from a couple of attributes I’ve yet to figure out (such as why do I have ‘1′ next the the groups?) I prefer this format and the corresponding format, when clicking on a link, is also better and kept inline with the new UI.  There is also an “App Directory” link that will take you to a dedicated apps page (although this doesn’t seem to show me my installed apps, just apps to install – something else to hunt around for).

The new UI for Facebook does look different to the old UI and it takes a bit of getting used to but the new features are, mainly, well thought through (as you’d expect from such a large site) although slightly slow.

I was all set to say “I don’t like this new layout” but, in actual fact, when researching it for this post I found that I actually do like it.  It’ll be interesting to see the overall reaction when it’s rolled out further.

Incidentally, I have removed certain information from the screen shots, such as last names and message content, purely for privacy reasons.

The screenshots and testing was performed on Safari for Windows V4.0.4.