Facebook rolls out interface tweaks on desktop and mobile
Let’s hope Mark Zuckerberg is in his safe room. Facebook have just started rolling out their latest changes to the user interface and as with all of these things, we can probably expect a torrent of anger to follow.
The changes appear to be mostly cosmetic – bringing the icons and logos in line across multiple platforms. For example, there are now tiny icons to denote whether a notification is notifying you of a Like, a Comment or a Tag. This also appears to have affected the Facebook mobile app – without an update having to be downloaded. Groups have also had a new icon added.
And in-line with the mobile app, Facebook have also added an unread updates count to the blue bar at the top for your news feed – so if you’re busy browsing around people’s walls or photos, you’ll know when to check back for new content.
In what will no doubt madden users, they’ve also switched around the position of the search bar and the notification icons – putting the notifications, messages and friend request icons to the right. It’s going to take users some getting used to – especially when your eyes are trained to dart to the top left when hearing the notification sound.
The other big change on the full size version of the website is a question of scale. In perhaps what is an example of “less is more”, the font size appears to have been given a boost, and comments have been expanded more dramatically (rather than having to click to see more).
All changes to websites inevitably unleash waves of horror as users learn to adapt to them – so expect this backlash to be no less fierce than… umm… well… the last ten Facebook redesign. But before you post a status attacking him, spare a thought for Mark Zuckerberg, crying himself to sleep over the reaction – with only his billions of dollars to comfort him.
