People hate Change. At least if the outrage over Facebook’s layout change this past week is any indication that is. I know for a fact that users generally dislike change when it comes to the user interface they’re used to. Website layout, software, magazines, it doesn’t matter. You get used to looking in one place for a button to access your inbox and now its not there. Its now easier to access your notifications, but its no longer on the bottom of the screen. Browsing images, posts, news, events and more makes more sense with the new layout, but its not the way you were conditioned to clicking, so you complain.

I saw it when I redesigned Linuxtracker last year even though most of the layout stayed the same it was the images that changed. I complained at first when my account was moved to the new Facebook layout. After all, I had heard so much about it on twitter and from my friends on FB that how could I not be offended by the new layout, until I realized that it didn’t suck at all and was in fact much better.

A nice young programmer at Facebook, Jing Chen, actually BLOGGED about it on the facebook blog (did you know they had a blog?) and after reading her post, it all makes sense. Too much sense!

For instance, the last change that brought the News Feed and the Live Feed to your home page was more or less done away with and now there’s one news feed. Yes, it’s still segmented in to two sections, Top News and Most Recent, but its all back under news. Right where it should be.

If you look under your photo, you’ll see the menu for the other sections. Go ahead, click on photos. I dare you. Woah! Look at that! That makes way more sense doesn’t it? The news feed is replaced by photos. Click on events or messages and you get the pages for that. Its much easier to browse now.

Another change for the better is moving the notifications to the top by the Facebook logo. Under the old style, everything was in the bar on the bottom. If you clicked the notifications, it shot to the top of the page (and I was NEVER) able to see all of the notifications unless I managed to click see all before it was gone. Not any more. Its a better layout as it keeps the important stuff above the fold and it doesn’t place a bar at the bottom of the screen. Yes, the chat is still down there, but then thats a good, out of the way place for it. After all, how much content is in the bottom right corner of the page?

The other change that you Farmville fans will love is the easier access to the games and other applications in facebook. Now they function in almost the same manner as the photos and other items at the top. Its all around easier.

For more information on the changes to Facebook, check out the Post on them and let me know what you think (or what you would have done differently.

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