As I pointed out last time, Facebook profiles have undergone a pretty big renovation. This is a part of their “drive” to filter out the noise and make profiles less cluttered and more usable. Back then, the page looked terribly white-washed, with the layout feeling stretched and spread out beyond what looks naturally aesthetic. Probably it’s because I’ve grown used to seeing all my content in a narrow strip down the centre of the screen. Attempt at making use of all the screen real estate is good, but there are a few more things that I find mighty interesting.

The new look

The design has been further changed from last time. It at least looks slightly more colourful this time around thanks to Facebook’s “import” feature (which is like a life-stream generated from various services over the web), but White and a smoke-y Gray continue to dominate the colour combination. The layout is in tatters at certain points, but that’s probably because it’s still in testing and not ready for mass consumption.

The decision to go with tabs is a smart one, because it finally allows the user to decide which applications and what information should get top most priority. After all, your profile page is a reflection on you, right? I hope they allow some kind of colour schemes (aesthetically pleasing, not like MySpace) to allow that final “personal touch”.

Personal User Info

The user information has been pushed to the second tab, and it contains all your information. From Education/Work to your favourite artists, movies, television shows and books. These are still the applications that exist in the original design. They can moved around and edited based on how you want to focus attention. There currently seems to be no way to add more applications than the ones already there by default to the first two tabs, which is a little odd because award winning apps like the “Extended Information” application should actually belong to this tab.

The third tab is all your photos, and is simply an extension of your “View photos of ” action link under your profile picture in the current design. There is a nice sliding effect when you click over to the next or previous list of photos, and shows the sites slow move towards a reload-less interface.

Boxes

Finally the tab that all “developers” will be looking at very closely. It is candidly called “Boxes” (I hope they change it before release) and contains all the profile boxes of the applications you have added. They can be edited, moved around, and follow the same wide-narrow layout convention offered in the current design. I like the idea of grouping all the applications in one tab, but I don’t like the idea of not being able to move applications around to other tabs. They need to reconsider that decision, otherwise people will probably never click through to the fourth tab (yes, applications are pushed to the last tab, and Facebook calls themselves developer friendly) and hence never get to see the applications that a user has added. That will be a serious loss to the developers. Either that, or Facebook is trying to promote heavier use of the canvas pages (standalone page offered to every application for proper functionality) by discouraging developers from pushing content to the profile boxes.

Ultimately, this will see reduced activity via the profile boxes, and increased interaction on the canvas pages. Users have complained being forced into inviting other users before they could proceed beyond a certain level on the canvas pages, but this move shows Facebook’s confidence in being able to restrict that behaviour. We’ll see how this ultimately pans out.

The overall judgement

The view from a few step backwards shows that the new design is an evolutionary step forward. It’s not a rash decision on the part of Facebook, but it definitely is one that will make developers and application companies stop and re-evaluate all the methods they’ve been using for viral adoption and distribution of their application. Slide backed down because of these future changes, because they know any application not already gone viral will have a hard time breaking the shell Facebook is building around user’s profiles. I’m just glad we won’t have any more of the “FunWall” type applications. Those are just pathetic.

Secondly, and this is the most important thing, the deal with the tabs. All these tabs are asynchronously loaded. Speed might be one issue, but the other issue is (quite plainly) the case of screen scraping. Facebook is obviously trying to avoid scraping by dividing the information among tabs that will only load asynchronously, and hence, scrapers cannot get access to anything other than the static data (which is the profile picture and the friend list on the left). Smart move, definitely, on Facebook’s part, because this will stop bots from harvesting information about you without your permission. More security means less worries.

What I’d like to see

More colour.

Not at the levels of MySpace, but definitely other monochrome combinations to go with the White-Gray. Something to differentiate profiles and not make all of them (a rather drab) Blue. Personalisation options are always popular, and allowing people to decorate their pages will be awesome. Maybe something like iGoogle themes (which again, suck) but nicer.

Secondly, I’d like to see application information shown to the “user”, not just the developer. And by information, I mean emphasis on things like the various fields requested by an application using API calls. This could list out things like how many times an application has requested for the friends list, or your personal information. How many times has it updated your profile box. What actions cause change to your profile box, and more things like that. What this will do is allow a user to judge for themselves if an application is requesting data relevant to it’s subject. If a quotes application (like mine) begins to request your marital status, you should become suspicious and report it to Facebook, which they can take up with the developers. This policing is required, because as has been shown many times (and in a rather douche-y way) on the web, all your information is actually at risk the moment you add an application. As long as you don’t know how an application is interacting with your details, you are at risk. This will be the first step in removing that.

So here’s to a better Facebook experience!