Has anyone noticed the little new changes made to Facebook?? Of course all of you have, it's the first thing we check when we wake up anyway!! Well, I dont know why Facebook has chosen to make such changes, some are ok, but some are just plain bad.
First was the profile layout change. I was among the few who did not click on the 'change to the new profile' button in the first place. I have always preferred the old layout. At least it's easier for me to see our mutual friends. But that aside, it's nice that we can add in the languages we speak and you get a little summary of who we are at the top centre page of our profile. Err...the pictures we are tagged in just had to be shown immediately to anyone who clicks on our profile >< It does get kinda annoying when you see an application picture* you are tagged in everytime you view your own profile.
*Application picture= those annoying app.s that 'finds your top 10 best friends' or shows your birthday on a calendar to show that a friend has 'taken the thought to remember your big day'. Oh please.....
There are some redundant buttons like Edit profile. There are about 2 buttons of it! One at the top right corner of your profile and another one after the little summary under your name. The Friends button has double of it. One is under the list of buttons under your profile picture while the other is just below the first Friend button. If I had a friend request, it would be shown at the right panel of my Home page. When clicked, it says the friend request thingy have moved to the left panel of the page. Ok..... I can also see a friend request notification at the top bar of the page too (the area where you see your notifications). How many times must I be told that someone wants to be friends? There is no way to cancel/'Ignore' a request too, there's only 'Not now' what does that mean? Am I going to be questioned about my decision later on?? Nope, turns out I have to delete the requests later at Friend requests>View all requests. Who knew shunning away from a friend request needed double steps!
Next we come to the worst 'improvement' of Facebook. The photo viewing interface. It completely and utterly sucks!!!!!!! I dont understand why they had to change it when the old one was fine. The new one has this black block that appear to show the images. (Is it Flash?) I dont know, it's just aesthetically bad. Facebook has a clean colour scheme of white and blue. Everything is neat and simple, that is Facebook's trademark. A black block suddenly appearing in the middle of the page is like fish out of water! Out of place and awkward! Another annoying thing is that when you click outside the box, it closes down by itself. -___- Ok, I havent finish viewing the pictures!!! It may be faster at loading the next picture but this advantage isnt enough to outshine the other flaws.
However, all complaints aside, there are some changes worth applauding. As a photographer, I always create new albums. The more convenient and fast way of uploading pictures is a big improvement from the old 5 pictures per upload uploader. The facial recognition for tagging is also impressive, I'm still wondering how they detect faces, (by colour perhaps?) The nifty feature of setting the album private or limited to a few people is also a nice touch!
Well, what else.....I have seen a lot of statuses warning us that our Privacy settings must be changes if we want the state of privacy that we want. It does get a bit annoying that you have to constantly go change it in case Facebook sets it to 'not-so-private' mode by default -____-
All in all, Facebook is changing, I understand change is necessary for improvement but not all changes are good things. Conclusion: Please change the hideous photo viewing interface Facebook!!
