A pairing of the two most hyped tech products of the year: Facebook released what is arguably the single best iPhone-customized website to date at iphone.facebook.com. Like the Netvibes iPhone site which launched late yesterday, it isn’t much to look at in a normal browser. But open that thing up in an iPhone and you’ve got a very usable site.
The site uses javascript to avoid page refreshes, although there is still some lag in moving around the site (this is an iPhone issue). The main navigation tabs – Home, Profile, Friends and Inbox – are at the top of the site. Click on any person and see their profile, wall or photos via a horizontally scrolling interface.
Overall I’d give this a top rating except for the occasional javascript error that crashed it out. Given that this hasn’t officially launched yet, I’d actually expect more bugs than I was able to find.
I have not seen a better iPhone website than this one. If you have, let me know. A lot of startups are going to look to this as the gold standard. At least for now.
Look for an announcement on the Facebook blog sometime this morning.
Bragging about the size of your inbox again, mike?
I rarely read facebook email. Hell, I rarely read email.
Well at least you followed up on your previous comment stating that Facebook and iPhone are the center of your universe.
it certainly doesn’t like IE7
what’s IE7?
this is awesome. do you think they will open source this as well? sure would help with those of us looking to copy them.
http://www.tech...ce-code-leaked/
That would be Internet ExploDer 7 Mike
I don’t agree that this is not much to look at in a regular browser though. Resize your Firefox windown down to a smallish size and click through it. This is in my opinion a bit of a watershed moment when you see that in action. It’s not only the best mobile version of a site for an iphone, but quite possibly the best mobile version of any site anywhere out there. This will be the kind of thing that web developers strive for in the years to come.
What do you think; did they get Apple to help them out to give it that ‘Apple feel’ for the between page effect?
I don’t know if they had help from Apple, but facebook has Joe Hewitt, who’s largely considered the most adept iPhone Safari developer out there.
http://www.joehewitt.com/iui/
The screenshot looks very cool and makes me want to buy an iPhone.
hmm.. do I use facebook that much?
This time I have to disagree. The interaction design is totally un-imaginative and plain terrible. Just because this is an iphone interface does not result in the only result of a click is to “slide interface left”.
Clicking a tab should result in the tab and its respective content appearing in situ. the metaphor is lost by sliding the interface as a resutl of absolutely every click. It doesn’t work and its just plain wrong.
Do it because you shuold, not just because you can.
I thought the whole point of the iphone is that you could surf the ‘real’ web with it? Many sites are going down this route and it strikes me as a bad idea – let’s have good quality XHTML and perhaps a style sheet for mobile devices…
Justing: Maybe the clicks on the sub tabs shouldn’t have that sliding effect, but I don’t see what the problem is with using it instead of a top to bottom load effect? As you say “clicking a tab should result in the tab and its respective content appearing” and that’s exactly what happens.
Mike (11). Agree with you there for the long run. But unfortunately ‘real’ sites pages are getting bigger size wise in order to still keep up in today’s world. Although you could use xhtml and a stylesheet to serve that same content in a different format, the REAL problem is the size of pages and time/cost for downloading them. Hence a somewhat drummed down size makes sense at present. Hopefully the advances in speed and reductions in cost for mobile browsing will make this a non-issue going forward but in today’s market you wouldn’t want to be caught snoozing while you wait for that to happen….
Man I wish I had 1300$ a year for a phone… haha
Hi Michael,
The winning combination is going to be iPhone and Skype. Flat rate for all your calls national and international.
I like Facebook and iPhone. These is like candy for me.
Mario Ruiz
http://www.oursheet.com
How does a site like iphone.facebook.com, specifically targeted at the iphone help a move towards device independence. Why differentiate between the iphone and the rest of the web endabled device world…
Also they’ve essentially just crammed the site into the iUI framework when they could have done something a bit more clever like loading the tabs dynamically without sliding around the place – comes across as an odd behaviour.
I like it really – just don’t understand the approach, other than from a marketing point of view….
Looks good, can’t wait to the UK release of them. The reason I have been holding off getting a new blackberry/mobile.
Cheers,
Scott
I liked the look at it, so tried it on my UK T-Mobile Vario 2, and was told it was blocked for adult content!!! m.facebook.com works though.
@Michael, a dead horse that just will not go away
Not sure about the negativity. This is an astounding implementation. Beautiful, functional and distinctly Facebook
grab a friend with a Helio Ocean and check out the myspace app. The iPhone’s facebook page is very similar to the myspace design.
@ Sam (12) – good point, but the correct use of XHTML and CSS should stop pages being unnecessarily large. I am speaking as a developer. At least Anon (15) agrees with me
I’m concerned that if we have one implementation for iPhone we should have another for Blackberry … device independent sites should stop us reverting to the bad old days where we had to develop for IE/Netscape/IE Mac…
Related article – http://www.tuaw...phone-websites/
I would be very surprised if this WASN’T Joe Hewitt’s work. It does, in fact, use some form of iUI (check the source) which Joe Hewitt created just before his company was bought by Facebook.
If you have an Xbox with XBMC, check out this iPhone XBMC remote control I’ve been working on…
http://tlrobins...cts/xbmciphone/
[sarcasm] WOW, this is so cool. iPhone can really do that?
First of all, as if wasting 20 minutes on your home/work computer on Facebook isn’t sufficeient, now you can waste all your time on iPhone & Facebook. Go for it!
Second of all, everyone speaks of Skype + iPhone as if it’s “the” technology breakthrough”. Hummm, have you seen a Nokia N80/N95 with Gizmo? How about with Fring? Been done…iPhone will be at least 2 years behind on that.
Mike (21) Completely agree, this is, I believe, more of a marketing move than anything – or at least driven by marketing decisions – not user experience. If you have iphone.fb.com why not nokiaN95.fb.com or nintendoDSlite.fb.com etc etc – you get the idea… What i think would have been really great is some smart, semantic, XHTML, marked up with css according to appropriate media type(s) plus more of a progressive enhancemet approach to the impelentation of the pages – i.e the iphone site doesn’t work if you have javascript disabled…
Why not take an approach that can tick the boxes for a broad spectrum of web enabled devices…
It’s interesting as these are both considered walled gardens.
Nothing inherently wrong with a walled garden Jeremiah.
wow, a post that combines two things i cant stand:
Facebook:
http://misanthr...about-facebook/
And The iPhone:
http://misanthr...o-not-like-you/
wish they’d figure out a good cookie system, as even having to enter my password everytime is even more annoying on an iphone.
Michael,
Your nose is brown enough already, it’s ok to remove it from Mark’s backend now.
Quite honestly, I am growing quite tired of reading about Facebook on this site.
Are you planning on renaming this blog to TechFaceCrunchBook?
Bye
Whatever happened to surfing the real web on the iPhone? I’m sure the Facebook guys got some assistance for this application from Apple and I’m surprised they encouraged them to make an iPhone specific Facebook app.
Another reason to go and buy iPhone I guess.
I’m hoping that the release of this app means that Facebook is really paying attention to the iPhone now. It would be nice to see a way to upload pictures taken on my iPhone to Facebook on the go, rather than having to wait until I get home, sync them to my computer, etc. I’ve already tried emailing them to the Facebook mobile uploads email address, and of course I have my account set up for mobile, but it just kicks the emails back saying that they’re not coming from a mobile phone (obviously because it’s coming from a real email address, rather than an MMS message).
Facebook, if you’re listening, please implement this feature.
Facebook is about a generation behind my contributions to the Internet. I am working on the third generation of websites. Coming to an Iphone near you. And open source to boot.
(Opinion based on screenshots)
Tabs inside tabs is the gold standard of iPhone web design? Please say it aint so Arrington!
Similar thing announced today for viewing books…. http://www.iht....ooks-iPhone.php
this is cool, i’ve been working on an interface myself and had even contacted joe about helping get some better api support internally. it’s been out for a while http://fp.timheuer.com but is simple compared to this (although mine does let you save your session). of course if you control the facebook api’s it is easier to create a better one!
A scaled down version of Facebook that only works on one phone?? Why is this “UltraCool” ??
I use Opera Mini that works almost perfect on the regular Facebook site, and on virtually any phone.
**Disclaimer** I work for Opera Software
I checked it out in Firefox as someone else recommended.
It really is well done. There is no doubt about it.
I am surprised by all the evil-wishers in here. Then again, great change and advances are almost always confronted by ignorance and objections.
Not to say the platform really looks that revolutionary, but Mike is right. It is probably the best iPhone or perhaps better to say mobile app out there.
Tim McCormack
iRent2u.com – The Online Rental Marketplace
Interesting, it doesn’t work on WM6.
@Tim(38). No ignorance here Tim, just some well founded questions about some of the choices that have been made and their impact on the wider movement of device independence and the One web.
You were right first time though – its an iphone app not a mobile app – try it on a few mobiles – even the N95 – doesn’t work… so the question is still, why focus solely on the iphone and push iphone.facebook.com instead of producing something for a broad range of web enabled devices and update m.facebook.com…?
How much has it helped to increase productivity? by negative 10 points.
it’s basically the .mobi standard of displaying web content for mobile devices
Every morning I wake and start typing http://www.tech….. I already know there will be 1254875 posts about Facebook!!!
I’m in the “a special site is a step backwards. use css” camp with otherMike and Anon.
wow, i just checked it out and it is absolutely AMAZING. It makes all of the other websites that tried to do iphone interfaces look primitive. Kudos to Facebook!
The app really is pretty sweet. I love how it uses JavaScript to avoid loading new pages for different tabs. Mike, you better accept me as your friend bro.
i agree with all the superlative adjectives being tossed around.
The “full web” experiences still works, this is just easier to use because it *was*designed for the specific device. You have an opportunity to market two different products, which one do you want to market:
“Easier to use, fun and ultracool!!” or
“harder to use, but useful and kinda nice”
If FB (or any other site) wants to develop apps for the iPhone, as long as their non-iphone app still work fine, why does anyone care?
Looks great ! Try it on testiphone.com or something like it to get a better feel …
The simplicitiy is nice though, and I’m thinking I might try it out as an alternative to the real facebook page for a bit — it doesn’t look like there are Facebook apps on the iPhone version !
Just proves the point that “real internet” on a mobile device is ridiculous. Japan/Korea has two versions of every website – mobile and web. they’ve been doing it for 8 yrs (iMode launched in 1999).
So just b/c Mr. Jobs says the mobile internet is dead we should all believe it? That’s crazy. Yes initial implentations of WAP sucked, but that doesn’t mean we should all be forced to be constantly zooming in and out of full web pages.