Facebook Releases New Simplified Design
Posted by Nick O'Neill on May 20th, 2008 9:53 PMFacebook has highly simplified their new design down to a single bar. The left navigation is gone and advertisements will be displayed on the right hand side of the site. The new design looks pretty bare but there are no screenshots of what the other pages will look like. Putting ads on the right hand side doesn’t sound like the best idea to me. Traditional web design rules state that users typically look to the top and left hand side of the page before anything else. This could vary across cultures though.
I’m not quite sure about Facebook’s decision to make the new design this simple. The new design appears to look like a header that could work across any site and be built into a user’s browser. Perhaps that’s Facebook’s intention. I’m excited to see what other designs Facebook has up their sleeve. What are your thoughts on the new design? Do you think it’s too simple? Are there any changes that you think would work?
May 20th, 2008 at 10:10 pm
I don’t think I like it. It’s a little too bare. I’m sure I’ll get used to it, but I don’t consider this to be a major improvement.
May 20th, 2008 at 10:22 pm
The easy design is nice. But for your comment about placing ads on the right a mistake….I agree that you’re right that people look to the upper left of a page first. But studies show…though I can refer to them right now…that ads on the right of the page, near the scroll bar, get a higher click-through. Supposedly because those ads are closer to the scroll bar and require less mouse travel.
May 20th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Nick, Where can we see more screenshots or larger ones?
May 21st, 2008 at 12:01 am
Looks really interesting. I want to see some other pages with the new skin. Where did you get these shots? Anything public yet?
May 21st, 2008 at 6:35 am
When they announced it yesterday on the Facebook Profiles Preview Page, I was a little shocked. It took me a second to realise what they were doing, but once I wrapped my head around it I really got to liking it. I think pages can interact well with this new design if they format them well, and everything will be framed nicely with this new header and the chat bar.
I wonder if it will be floating like the chat bar?
May 21st, 2008 at 10:23 am
FYI the screenshots can be found here:
http://www.facebook.com/FacebookPreviews?ref=share
May 22nd, 2008 at 12:14 am
I actually like it. I hate having to scroll down a long profile page, whether my own or someone else’s, so I think the new design, with its tabs, will make it a lot easier to navigate.