note: you may not have gotten the new design, I believe they are rolling it out google-style (some users at a time)
Changes
real-Time streaming
My favorite change to the homepage is real-time streaming of updates. This AJAX goodness now auto-updates the stream without us stalkers having to repeatedly press ‘refresh’. What real-time does is allows us to waste less time trying to fetch from our streams which breaks our workflow. I’ve presented about this at the last BarCamp Buffalo.
highlights
Re-vamped right column to show popular items from your network’s stream. Filters out the good stuff, saves the trouble of looking through your stream and I believe it also is determined by clicks (seen some photos there with no comments).
filter by group
Left side lets you see groups (of friends) that you may have created and allows you to view items only posted by those people. Time to organize out some of my network. Family group is a definite must.
filter by type
Another filter is the ability to filter by type. This allows you to filter the stream by things such as video, photos, links, notes and even by application. When you click on some of these, they change the publisher (check next section).
publisher box by context
The publisher, the box that allows you to post to wall, update your status, share a link and other things, has now been re-vamped to fit any context. In the homepage, try clicking on the video filter, now the publisher lets you record a video (through webcam) or post a video! How awesome is that? It’s now flexible to adjust to your context.
prediction: Since they have application filters, I wonder if they’ll open up API methods to allow applications to add features to publisher based on their own context.
rounded corners
A small change, purely eye candy, is that small profile pictures now have rounded corners, less dangers for the eyes.
Additional Reading
- See the official Facebook homepage tour
- look into the redesign by Eric Eldon at VentureBeat
