by flatline3 on 8/23/12, 5:15 PM
Facebook made the mistake of optimizing for their developers' sense of efficiency -- at the cost of user experience -- rather than optimizing for their users' experience.
Given the resources available to them, switching to UIWebView was a ridiculous trade-off. I'm glad to see they rectified this decision.
The lesson to be learned is this: at the end of the day, it's the product and user experience that matters. If you sacrifice product quality for some notion of engineering perfectionism -- whatever it might be -- you're not doing your job as a professional engineer.
by christiangenco on 8/23/12, 5:20 PM
Just updated - it's quite noticeably faster, and feels much more native than their previous shortcut of lots of UIWebViews. I commend the Facebook iOS team! This app has regained its throne as the model of iOS UX.
Let this be a lesson to us all: when putting user experience as the first priority, the nirvana of writing your UI once in HTML and having it work universally still isn't there.
by mootothemax on 8/23/12, 5:15 PM
It has constantly amazed me that Facebook's mobile app experiences are so, so poor.
At the same time, having watched my friends swear at Facebook on their smartphones and yet continue to use the app, day-in, day-out, maybe Facebook are more clever than I give them credit for; I haven't seen people move elsewhere because of the problems.
by noamsml on 8/23/12, 5:17 PM
Here's to the hope that an android counterpart is not far behind.
by brittohalloran on 8/23/12, 5:27 PM
The "photos-overflow-outside-the-white-card-theyre-on" effect has always bugged me. It looks like a rendering defect or something. I get that they're trying to maximize screen real estate, but I think it just looks terrible.
by tsurantino on 8/23/12, 5:21 PM
It's an extraordinary improvement. Does anyone know if it was written in native Objective-C or if this is a very optimized HTML5 version (or hybrid, like the LinkedIn app)
by dirkdk on 8/23/12, 7:11 PM
by esilverberg2 on 8/23/12, 5:43 PM
Has anyone there found info about what libraries Facebook has embedded into this app? For example, if you go to Privacy and Legal in the Camera • app, you get a nice list of every open-source project they embed. I can't find it in this new FB app...
by dude_abides on 8/23/12, 5:37 PM
No love for Android users? :(
by thomseddon on 8/23/12, 5:13 PM
by destraynor on 8/23/12, 5:14 PM
Congrats to the team at Facebook, overdue, but it's a massive improvement.
by jpxxx on 8/23/12, 5:46 PM
Used it, it truly is miles better. They can now finally say they're serious about mobile with a straight face.
by SG- on 8/23/12, 6:36 PM
I vaguely remember when Facebook previously had a nice native iOS app long ago and their main or only iOS dev ranted about the App store and refused to do any more iOS development.
Some time after a terrible webapp was released. Not quite sure why someone else there couldn't take over maintenance of it.
by bsaul on 8/23/12, 11:04 PM
Facebook app lost 100% of their iOS dev team when joe hewitt stopped developing for them. They decided to let interns in charge of native libraries like Three20 (which has become a mess since then) and let web people in charge. It took them to hire someone from Apple to get their things together and do something valid on that platform.
What's crazy is that nobody around them was able to tell them that mobile constraints makes it a entirely different think than the web. You just need to code one "hello world" with one button using phonegap to realize that uiwebview isn't anywhere close to native sdk.
On the other side,the fact that Apple decided not to update UIWebView to nitro was probably a big matter for them...
by sazpaz on 8/23/12, 6:05 PM
Did they added monetization strategies into this app (ads, sponsored stories, etc)? I'm not an iOS user, but after their harsh stock decline I would've expected to see aggressive monetization on the mobile app/web.
by antirez on 8/23/12, 6:09 PM
Just tried, very good! A big step forward.
I hope they'll go the extra mile and release a full featured desktop client as well, starting with osx possibly.
by jbverschoor on 8/23/12, 6:13 PM
Why the hell did this take so long.
I really don't understand. Surely facebook understands the importance of mobile.
Glad they finally did it though..
by DonnyV on 8/23/12, 5:58 PM
Not sure why these companies release there apps for iOS first when Android has the market share. It makes absolutely no business sense.
by vladoh on 8/23/12, 6:07 PM
I tried the new app on the iPad 1 and personally I still prefer the web page - it still feels smoother for scrolling. Another thing I don't like in the app is the chat list on the right that is always visible even if I'm offline. Is it better on the newer iPads?
by tnorthcutt on 8/23/12, 6:08 PM
It seems strange that they'd use a font size of 11px on that page.
by nathan_f77 on 8/24/12, 10:16 AM
This is a fascinating read. I love the level of detail, talking about solutions to performance problems like caching the heights of rendered strings.
by nicolasmiller on 8/23/12, 8:26 PM
Facebook gives me a feeling quite like the one I feel I would have observing off-white eggshell paint dry or maybe munching on a packing peanut.
by denzil_correa on 8/24/12, 7:29 AM
There are still a few issues
[1] The application doesn't work well in landscape mode
[2] No feature to edit comments, this was existing as a feature in the previous app.
by logn on 8/23/12, 6:13 PM
It's about time. I'm surprised that their terrible mobile app hasn't hurt them in marketshare more.
by chrisdroukas on 8/23/12, 5:24 PM
Is it me, or is line spacing on the iPad really tight?
by dreamdu5t on 8/23/12, 11:39 PM
Why start with iOS and not Android? Seriously!?
by playhard on 8/23/12, 5:57 PM
Finally! Huge improvement.
by sidcool on 8/23/12, 6:11 PM
Android users waiting...
by anuraj on 8/24/12, 5:11 AM
Bye Bye HTML5!
by alexjarvis on 8/23/12, 6:45 PM
about bloody time!
by Baba_Chaghaloo on 8/23/12, 6:52 PM
A faster, more terminal cancer. Oh happy day.