Ask HN: Thoughts on the new FB layout? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Thoughts on the new FB layout?

6 pointsnav13 comments

Hate it. I was always annoyed when I had to switch from Top News to Most Recent, and now I don't have a choice. The addition of random visual embellishments like blue corners and 3d borders takes away from readability and scan-ability.

Also I can't imagine why I would want a side feed of people commenting on people who I'm not even friend's with photos. This violates peoples expectations of Facebook.

So good job guys, you broke your core product. This is just what you need to defeat Twitter and Google Plus.

Edit: I just noticed they stapled the real time feed to the buddy list, halving it. So now I can see even less of the buddy list (the one they broke last month) at once.

For the longest time I didn't realize that there was a Top News and a Most Recent news. When I discovered it, facebook became a lot more useful to me.

Initially, I'm always opposed to changes on FB, but it usually grows on me after a while. I didn't like how they released a slew of updates all at once tonight; I think in the future they should gradually roll out big changes like these.

New layout? Didn't notice it because I haven't logged in for more than a year and not missing it at all.

Their layout gets busier and busier with each iteration. I can't claim to love all of it, although some of the changes might make reading easier -- like the thin horizontal lines between comments, or larger in-line image previews.

Would you guys mind uploading a couple screenshots? I don't have the new design.

I like the look and feel of most of the changes but I really wish they didn't have fixed width layout for all screen sizes.

Facebook has lost me. I need something clean and simple. That it's not.

I stopped using Facebook a week or two ago when they started putting an opaque overlay over the entire page to direct my attention to a popup box that said nothing interesting and had no apparent way of closing it, no [X] in the corner. If that's a feature of the new layout, I already hate it even though I haven't been able to see the new layout.

A hint to UI developers: if your proposed user interface feature resembles something that porn sites did in the 1990s which users found so obnoxious that browser developers rewrote their products to disallow it, because disabling your feature would gain the browser many additional users, don't do it.

That doesn't sound like anything I've ever seen on Facebook (and, since I work there, I use it a lot). Were you doing anything specific when this happened? Do you have any other information so I can pass it on to the right people?

It happened immediately after logging on, when looking at the news feed. I was able to see the page for a split second while it first rendered and then some JS covered everything up with mostly-opaque white. I think the popup box was pointing to the update status input box, but I forget what it said.

I just logged in and did not get it, so it seems to be gone now.

This sounds like it might have been a bug rather than something on purpose. When we introduce something new, we use overlays to help users discover these new features. For example, how to change the privacy of their posts, to tag people, or check into a new location. I'm fairly certain we don't use modal dialogs for these (only for the lightbox for photo viewing).

I can confirm this it was the reason I closed my account. I hated that it wouldn't let me close this new feature tour or whatever.

There was an overlay and would not let you continue without completing it. It was no bug. I think it's great that Facebook is becoming more reactive now that google+ is around. I've been requesting some of these features since the beginning. I wish they had come sooner.

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