While it is cleaner and makes more productive use of the top bar (at the same time making it thinner) it tucks and tweaks some features. I won’t go as far as to say things have been made hard to reach, but rather placed in some locations that we’re not quite used to. In at least one instance I’ll point out though, one feature has been peculiarly hidden.

Here’s the new bar:

Note the icons now near the Facebook logo representing Friend Requests, Messages, and Notifications. (Try and look past the fact that the “Messages” icon is more reminiscent of what most iconography uses for “chat” functions.) These icons bring your Friend Requests and Inbox interaction to closer parity with Notifications, where a drop-down gives you a preview of what’s waiting for you and a red-number indicator of new items.

At all times you can still get “Home” and to your profile with the righthand links.

Right, but where did my “Friends” go?

This is a harder question to answer. In some ways, finding friends and seeing lists is simple, living in the lefthand column like this:

But very quickly those of you who use Friends Lists may notice that from here you can’t get to that page where your friends were all lined up next to your lists and you could easily edit who was in what lists, etc.

So, where is that page now? It’s accessible in the drop down on the upper right- under “Account.”

There you’ll find, “Edit Friends,” as well as all of your other preferences, settings, privacy options and more. Convenient that they are all grouped like that, but odd that I can do an awful lot with my friends as individuals and lists over on the left-hand except for access this one page.

Let’s look at that left-hand list again:

Some of these are redundant considering the same icons live in the top bar. But it looks like one big one is missing: where’s video?

Here it is:

It’s under… photos? This would be the most boneheaded navigation change in my opinion. As strange as the Apple/Mac reality that iTunes (a music program) plays video but iPhoto does not. Video needs its own icon. Period.

Strangely enough in this lefthand menu you can’t delete or move around every icon – only some of them. (I can get rid of Ads & Pages if I want, but not Games?)

All in all, most of the new changes make logical sense, but they’ll still take some getting used to.

-Dean (@dbrowell)

Among the features added were push notifications and contact syncing. What does that look like and mean? Read on…

Push Push Push

Before you will be able to have anything pushed to your iPhone, your Push Notifications have to be turned on.

You’ll find those in your Settings app here:

You find the Push option hiding in your Settings app, after selecting Facebook.

And here’s what the settings look like:

For right now I don’t need to be bugged all the time, so for the important stuff I’ll let them ping me.

A Syncing Feeling

Back inside the Facebook app itself, click on Friends and you’ll notice a new button that says “Sync” in the upper right:

This takes you to a screen with two options. I feel this is slightly misleading since I haven’t found any evidence that having “Replace Photos” turned on by itself actually does anything – you have to have Syncing on in order for that slider to be meaningful (which is a shame, because I can certainly see wanting my photos to be replaced without any other data transfer between my Facebook and Contacts).

When you slide the button over to the on position for Syncing, the following warning pops up:

That warning is where I have a problem. While I know the concept of “syncing” means I’ll have to share information between at least two points what this warning suggests, without any explanation, is that my Contacts on my iPhone will be sent up to Facebook. It doesn’t just say, “your contacts who you are currently friends with” but broadly just says, “contacts from your device.” That’s a little odd and potentially disconcerting. If they aren’t my friends on Facebook but I have them in my Contacts, does it suggest them as friends? Does it ping or bug them? Does it try and contact people who are friends to tell them their phone number is wrong? The truth is it may do none of those things and might just harmlessly confirm that yes, they are my friends but I don’t know that for sure and with just that simple phrasing in there, I’m not inclined to try it just to have some people tapped on the shoulder by me when I don’t mean them to.  Furthermore, I’m not guaranteed Facebook will check with me when there is a conflict in information like Apple’s MobileMe does at whatever threshold you set it at. I do know people who don’t always make sure their contact info is super-up-to-date on Facebook (many don’t bother with their basic profile info after they first write it, in fact).

It’s a great update from a functionality perspective, and casual users will get a lot of use. But on the Sync addition, there’s just a bit more assurance needed, in my opinion, before I go merging my Facebook database with the one I really depend on — not because of privacy or nefarious big brother reasons any more than the simple trust in people to have one or both fully up to speed and the fear the “correct” info won’t be what’s left after the sync.

-Dean (@dbrowell)

-Dean (@dbrowell)

-Dean (@dbrowell)