Facebook has apparently added AJAX to their photo galleries. A number of people (including Owen Thomas of Valleywag) have emailed me about the update. When you click through the photos in each gallery, they load practically instantly. This resembles the classic lightbox gallery style. Lightbox has always cached the previous and next photo to enable faster loading times.
Owen also pointed out that some of the photos now use the subdomain “ll” which references limelight’s caching services. This partnership isn’t actually new so my guess is that they simply added another photo server. This minor change greatly improves Facebook’s gallery feature.
Facebook appears to consistently make minor changes to their user interface to improve the user experience. I’m looking forward to the larger changes such as contact grouping and multi-language support. Who knows when those updates will take place!
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I don't think I would really count that as AJAX.To be considered as proper AJAX, it has to use the XMLHttpRequest (orthe IE equivalent). However, what Facebook has done is put all thedata for the entire photo album on the page when you load it. Open upan image, and look at the pages, source. Near the bottom of the page,you'll see inside a tag, something like this:onloadRegister(function() {new Photostream($("myphoto"),"http://photos-d.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p …This is probably what I would have done as well. I think it's great.
Comment by Dan Jones — December 9, 2007 @ 12:33 pm
I don't think I would really count that as AJAX.
To be considered as proper AJAX, it has to use the XMLHttpRequest (or
the IE equivalent). However, what Facebook has done is put all the
data for the entire photo album on the page when you load it. Open up
an image, and look at the pages, source. Near the bottom of the page,
you'll see inside a tag, something like this:
onloadRegister(function() {new Photostream($("myphoto"),
"http://photos-d.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p …
This is probably what I would have done as well. I think it's great.
Comment by Dan Jones — December 9, 2007 @ 1:33 pm
Yeah, this is awesome, I wrote in about it and wasn't sure if I was crazy or not. iPhone users have enjoyed this for sometime now and it's nice to see it finally make it to the full site.
Comment by Ben Kessler — December 9, 2007 @ 5:45 pm
Great point Dan. Thanks for pointing out that it isn't completely AJAX. It is instead a javascript preloading script. Regardless, it makes things a lot smoother!
Comment by Nick O'Neill — December 9, 2007 @ 8:09 pm
Finally. Smoothness is definitely a plus.
Comment by Tan The Man — December 9, 2007 @ 10:19 pm
[...] photo galleries just got better. The photo pages now have an Ajax interface, which let the images load faster. But what is good for Facebook users may not be good for Facebook, at least in the short term. As [...]
Pingback by Facebook Photos get an Ajax Upgrade. Will Pageviews Suffer? — December 9, 2007 @ 9:41 pm
Yeah, this is awesome, I wrote in about it and wasn’t sure if I was crazy or not. iPhone users have enjoyed this for sometime now and it’s nice to see it finally make it to the full site.
Comment by Ben Kessler — December 9, 2007 @ 9:45 pm
[...] Facebook se sont ameliorées. Ces pages possèdent désormais une interface en Ajax qui permet un chargement plus rapide des photos. Mais ce qui est bon pour les utilisateurs ne l’est peut-être pas pour Facebook. [...]
Pingback by TechCrunch en français » Les galeries photos de Facebook désormais en Ajax; un influence sur le nombre de pages lues? — December 9, 2007 @ 11:51 pm
Great point Dan. Thanks for pointing out that it isn’t completely AJAX. It is instead a javascript preloading script. Regardless, it makes things a lot smoother!
Comment by Nick O'Neill — December 10, 2007 @ 12:09 am
Finally. Smoothness is definitely a plus.
Comment by Tan The Man — December 10, 2007 @ 2:19 am
now if only they'll add that option to let you choose only specific individual/contact(s) to view your photo albums. the "only friends" option is not sufficient. facebook really needs to learn from multiply in the photos department.
Comment by facebooker — December 10, 2007 @ 5:12 am
now if only they'll add that option to let you choose only specific individual/contact(s) to view your photo albums. the "only friends" option is not sufficient. facebook really needs to learn from multiply in the photos department.
Comment by facebooker — December 10, 2007 @ 6:12 am
I clearly remember a discussion with my mom back in the 90's about the potential of javascript preloading scripts. I thought at the time that she was crazy, but apparently she was right on! The poof is in the prudding when it comes to smooth graphic interfaces. And no… it really isn't straight AJAX, but who cares?
Comment by William O'Neill — December 10, 2007 @ 11:44 am
I clearly remember a discussion with my mom back in the 90′s about the potential of javascript preloading scripts. I thought at the time that she was crazy, but apparently she was right on! The poof is in the prudding when it comes to smooth graphic interfaces. And no… it really isn’t straight AJAX, but who cares?
Comment by William O'Neill — December 10, 2007 @ 4:44 pm
[...] photo galleries just got better. The photo pages now have an Ajax interface, which let the images load faster. But what is good for Facebook users may not be good for Facebook, at least in the short term. As [...]
Pingback by Business News Research » Facebook Photos get an Ajax Upgrade. Will Pageviews Suffer? — December 11, 2007 @ 2:26 am