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Today, Facebook announced that they will be shifting the Application Bar to the bottom left corner of the page, together with the chat bar.

So I was happily coding halfway today, when the Application Bar on the top disappeared and I was thinking it is due to me not drinking enough coffee. Then bang, it appear on the bottom on the second look

For those who do not know what Application Bar it, it consist of all your applications on Facebook, including Events, Photos, Videos and the other application you have installed. Previously, it can be access as a drop down list on the top. The new bar also means that bookmarked applications will now be visible always in the bottom.

Does the new Facebook profile really sucks ?

I started doing Facebook application development before the New Profile and things are pretty simple. 1 cached FBML for the profile page and the rest of the application is pretty much up to your own creativity. With the New Profile, you can have your application in the main Wall, OR it can be under Boxes, AND it COULD be under Application Tabs.

For end users, most of the first reaction from people I met is “It sucks”.  In fact, that is my first reaction too. Plus, designers will curse and swear too since now they have to design 2 more UI for Boxes and Application Tab. However, that also means that every Application gets the chances to have more exposure. Having a user putting your application to his / her application tab will be like winning a lottery, that means they love your application. You can now design a wide FBML  for Boxes Tab, and also a narrow FBML for Wall Tab, in which both can have radically different design, at the discreet of the developer.

Another tread we will see if that developers will now focus more on User’s stories to have their application noticed. Unless a user place their application under Wall Tab, it is unlikely that their friends will go the Boxes Tab to see “what application their friends have”. By focusing on User’s Stories, they will have information of their application to appear under the users’ Feeds, which is right on top on the user profile page. Applications not doing that yet will have to do that, to keep their applications competitive.

On the overall, while during the transition period, many might throw curses at Facebook New Profile design, I believe they will come to like it as they get used to it. Afterall, we get a less cluttered profile page now.

The Facebook, Where’s my application bar ?! by expertria.com, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.