It’s been some time since the last redesign and now desktop Facebook is cooking up a new design. At first glance this might look as a great idea. And I was eager to see what the company had cooked for us. It’s been some time since the last major redesign and this should be something fresh.

It all starts with a nice little notification saying:

They say curiosity killed the cat. Well, they were right. It took me exactly 30 seconds before I clicked the button “switch to classic Facebook”. I thought they would bring the old “most recent posts” button in a more clear and permanent manner. Turns out, you can’t even have most recent updates. The feed on the desktop facebook design is similar to my Instagram feed, one post from yesterday, then a post from an hour ago, and fifteen posts later a post from 10 minutes ago. The option to have the news ordered by time it was posted should be back, and permanent.

Some parts of the design are great. The other parts would be better if they were re-imagined. The options or settings button looks nice and clean and everything is clear. I have nothing bad to say on that point. But everything else that follows after this is just plain bad. Shall we start?

The overall looks of Facebook new design

The new looks come with this extremely empty space around posts of the facebook desktop site (thus the resemblance to Instagram for web).

Stories are given too much space. It’s like the child at school that is not A+ material but the parents insist that the kid must have A+. I hardly doubt that anyone uses Facebook Stories unless that person has Instagram stories linked to Facebook. Also, I can’t help it but notice that the looks resemble Instagram for web. On the bright side through this “public beta”, they can see the opinion of the public. Previous big change to Facebook desktop version looks wasn’t appreciated by the public, and people over time got to like it.

Messages are popping up right above the messenger icon in same manner as the icon. And now you can have only one active chat showing up.

As you can see on the image above. On the left side you have the “Home” options, greatly enlarged and with bold text. When you think about it, they are more visible than the posts themselves. When you hit create, a menu pops up. It’s the menu for creating new page, ads, events etc.

What i like

Not everything in the new design is to be hated. They only messed up the home page with the new redesign. When you click on the Notifications button, you are taken to a notifications page. On first sight it’s empty as the Sahara desert (maybe by default the first notification should be opened).

However, when you click on a notification that empty area immediately is filled up with the post. It also gives the about section for the group/page that this post is related too.

Your pages get redesigned too. However, just as the Home menu, the menu is too big compared to the actual content you are seeing. On the right Insights are shown in a nice way for you to understand how your public had reacted to your content. And yes, it also has a lot of empty space.

One thing I noticed is the Public View button. When you click on it, it takes you to a completely different page, the one your public is looking at. The blurred background color behind the header image also suggest that there might be some changes in that department too. Though, that is still a big if.

As this is still in beta (a public beta), there are still some parts that are not available in this new design of Facebook. So far the design looks great in some parts, but others must be polished prior to this becoming completely public.

Stay tuned for the update on this post.

PS. Check our article about Gmail Redesign and the new features too.