Facebook & Last.FM Redesigns

As a whole… I really like both of the new designs, both designs changed a lot and I think they make both pages look a lot cleaner, they removed a lot of clutter from the design. There are of course pros and cons for both of them!

Facebook

• Pro: Applications work! Might seem silly, however none of the apps that I use are complaining that they aren't compatible!!!
  
• Pro: Applications don't have to go on the front page! FINALLY! I can now just write on someone's wall without having to scroll past miles of applications. Instead applications can sit in their little AJAX tab and only load when I want them, beautiful!
• Pro: Facebook chat; the bar at the bottom actually looks like it belongs there! Before it just stuck out and looked out of place, however the new design has pulled it into the design a lot more! I dislike the idea of facebook chat, instant messaging within a web page just isn't clever, when I load a new page my messages just vanish!
• Con: Wall/Mini feed integration is just not clever, I can see how some people like it however by default the stuff that I have done on Facebook and people writing to me is all bundled together. Facebook have managed to seperate this with 'Wall Filters' which makes it vaguely useful, however not perfect by any streach of the imagination.
• Con: Tabs cannot me moved around and some can't be renamed… I don't want my apps page to be named 'Boxes' I want to call it 'Apps' or something!
• Con: The Boxes tab has an odd layout! Instead of two equal column there is a wide and a thin column, which I can cope with, my Picasa application sits fine in the thin column, that is what it was built for, however there is a massive gap on the right side between the thin column and the oh so beautiful adverts… oh well!

Last.FM

• Pro: Instant charts, rather than having to wait a whole week for the charts to be updated for most played in the week, year, etc it is now instant when you play a track it gets added to the statistics for the last 7 days, beautiful
• Pro: New menu structure, in the order of removing clutter some of the boxes on the main page, neighbours, groups, etc have been given their own page, I like that!
• Pro: The library has been updated to include a very cool 'coda slider' showing all the artists you listen to, it looks amazing!
  
• Con: Where has the 'Paint it in Black' gone?!? I loved that small feature to change the colour scheme black (nb: would hate to see this in facebook).
• Con: The banner at the top, isn't stunning, however if this is the biggest thing to complain about…

I think Last.FM’s update is better than the Facebook, they didn’t have a mini feed to destory, however seeing as both updates are fairly recent I expect to see a lot of small modification coming soon to iron out any bugs. The Last.FM update put in the facility to add applications as well, it hasn’t been turned on, and I’m a little worried about it, Facebook went down hill with the applications, however we will see when that bit goeslive!