As Google wages war, an unlikely company subtly improves the user experience for WP users.

[xcen]

That company is Facebook.

Facebook doesn't have a very good history with Windows Phone, refusing the commit an official app for the platform till today, forcing Microsoft to come up with its own (arguably not very good) version of the Facebook app.

Throughout the life of WP, users were forced to endure the WAP version of Facebook Mobile, as the touch-optimized site is buggy most of the time.

However, I noticed significant improvements since the release of WP8 (which the improvements can even be felt on WP7 devices). They cleaned up a lot of the quirks and made touch.facebook.com more usable to WP users. In fact, touch.facebook.com is highly usable for WP users today, with very few things not working.

As of a few hours ago, the (new) bug of not being able to touch on specific friend requests/messages/notifications have been fixed.

Going back, more improvements and fixes were made. One major one is the ability to side-scroll (go to your Timeline and try it out). Previously, all side-scrolls on the web are done through WebKit specific method, now Facebook uses a more universal approach. Some other improvements are: able to see entire pictures finally (switch to landscape to make the picture bigger), layout of like/comment on posts are fixed, sidebar functional and many more.

Obviously, there are many more improvements to be made.(I still can't go to a person's profile by tapping on the tagged link on a photo, for instance.) The same can be said of Microsoft's mobile web browser, which is still lacking compared to the competition. But the point is, Facebook is progressing and improving its services to more users, while Google decides to alienate more users.

The future of mobile web in terms of support for IE still seems uncertain. Many basic mobile webs work just fine, but requiring anything just a little bit more complex such as side-scrolling then support for IE Mobile just seems nonexistent. (For example, m.gsmarena.com uses WebKit specific code for side-scrolling) Go for more complicated web apps such as Google Maps, then you start to see why Google couldn't be bothered to provide any sort of usable experience in the first place, as everything is so entrenched in WebKit.

TL,DR: Even with small number of users, Facebook decides to increase support for WP while Google decides to entirely alienate and scale back support. Go try touch.facebook.com.

 

[MacDaMachine]

Have no idea what you are talking about?

 

[spaulagain]

He's talking about the web version of Facebook. It used to be a horrible mobile version. Now it looks and functions like and HTML/CSS version of the iOS app.

 

[brmiller1976]

Google Maps always ran fine in IE 9 and IE 10 for Windows Phone. It was only broken in the pre-Mango version of IE for NoDo.

As for Facebook revamping its mobile sites, that's likely due to pressure for consolidation of codebases. The more they can build out HTML5 that works cross-browser, the less they need to focus on the old mobile site or platform-specific versions of the site.

 

[MacDaMachine]

He's talking about the web version of Facebook. It used to be a horrible mobile version. Now it looks and functions like and HTML/CSS version of the iOS app.

Wow. I'm thinking he was saying FB announced that they were making their own app or something. Them fixing that isn't worthy of a topic honestly.

 

[ammarmalik2011]

You know what would subtly improve user experience? Not a ****ing web app, but a proper native first party Facebook app. That and a native Facebook Messenger app with all the features of the iOS version which includes VOIP, voice messages, 'sent' notification and pretty much everything on offer on iOS.

 

[TonyDedrick]

Why not just work with MS to make the actual app function like the mobile version?

 

[xcen]

Wow. I'm thinking he was saying FB announced that they were making their own app or something. Them fixing that isn't worthy of a topic honestly.

Considering that the touch website is the most feature-complete Facebook experience for WP users currently, I'd say that it's worthy of a topic when finally it is pleasant to use.

You know what would subtly improve user experience? Not a ****ing web app, but a proper native first party Facebook app. That and a native Facebook Messenger app with all the features of the iOS version which includes VOIP, voice messages, 'sent' notification and pretty much everything on offer on iOS.

Why not just work with MS to make the actual app function like the mobile version?

Of course that would be ideal, but that is not the entire point of the topic anyway. We can talk about how more companies should invest and create first-class apps for WP but we all know how that is going right now.

The point is Facebook is improving its mobile user experience to more users and that is highly beneficial to WP users. This is despite the fact that for the 3 years of WP's existence, Facebook's touch website NEVER worked correctly most of the time. WP users who started using WP and Facebook on constant basis since the beginning will understand the frustration. (It wasn't until a few months ago that the official WP Facebook app has the option to 'like' comments.)

 

[rockstarzzz]

Amongst all the negative comments, I would like to add - that change is MASSIVE! I'm impressed with how the website now looks. I don't know if anyone has seen how nice it looks throughout compared to what it was before. It essentially kills the need to have an app. Most of it is integrated anyway. For odd bits, I will rather go to this webpage which is now pinned on my start screen. For notifications, I have ME tile.

 

[invertme]

Wow. I'm thinking he was saying FB announced that they were making their own app or something. Them fixing that isn't worthy of a topic honestly.

Actually it IS topic worthy. You obviously just don't get it.

 

[Chregu]

Actually it IS topic worthy. You obviously just don't get it.

This topic feels a little bit like news paper front pages nowadays. Google, the bad guy of the day, is in it, a lot of suspense, we really want to ready it, but then the article has nothing to do with the title. I mean it's still a good post, and the news are great for people using Facebook and preferring the web page, but it really has no connection to Google at all.

 

[brmiller1976]

The sad thing is that they could just drop the HTML5 experience in a Metro wrapper and have a native app for WP and Windows 8 as well. It's not that hard!

 

[ImmortalWarrior]

This whole Webkit thing annoys me. HTML, Javascript, css and other web languages are standardized for a reason. When one browser starts displaying or processing these standard constructs differently and in a way that affects appearance, you get this problem.

The real issue is that nobody is following the standards perfectly. Webkit is a display engine for browsers, open source. We all know Microsoft doesn't use open source as the backbone of their services and we cannot expect them to. We can expect companies to make their rendering engines standards compliant. If the standards don't specify enough detail to make this possible, than the standards need to be improved. Then, and only then, will web code be cross platform and ubiquitous the way it is supposed to be.

 

[mister2d]

This whole Webkit thing annoys me. HTML, Javascript, css and other web languages are standardized for a reason. When one browser starts displaying or processing these standard constructs differently and in a way that affects appearance, you get this problem.

The real issue is that nobody is following the standards perfectly. Webkit is a display engine for browsers, open source. We all know Microsoft doesn't use open source as the backbone of their services and we cannot expect them to. We can expect companies to make their rendering engines standards compliant. If the standards don't specify enough detail to make this possible, than the standards need to be improved. Then, and only then, will web code be cross platform and ubiquitous the way it is supposed to be.

I don't know why the "whole Webkit thing" annoys you. It was a BS cop out from Google in the first place. Their mission statement (if you want to call it that) for Google Maps for mobile browsers is this:

Google Maps for mobile browsers is platform independent - you will always get a consistent experience and the latest features without needing to install any updates, no matter what phone you use.

Google Maps on your mobile browser - Official Google Mobile Blog

 

[MrSean490]

Going back, more improvements and fixes were made. One major one is the ability to side-scroll (go to your Timeline and try it out). Previously, all side-scrolls on the web are done through WebKit specific method, now Facebook uses a more universal approach. Some other improvements are: able to see entire pictures finally (switch to landscape to make the picture bigger), layout of like/comment on posts are fixed, sidebar functional and many more.

Been using touch.facebook.com on my WP7 for a long time now, I've noticed very minimal changes overall and the usability is mostly the same. I have not noticed any sidescrolling functionality on FB.

 

[Boris Gong]

I was told that m.facebook.com merged with touch.facebook.com and they will switch according to your phone.

Just tried it on touch.facebook.com and guess it's not the truth.
Guess we need to change our default Facebook link

 

[ceraf]

Still can't tag people in comments =/

 

[brmiller1976]

Does anybody else find it ironic that the "develop for WebKit only, screw the other browsers" people were the ones screaming and whining the loudest about IE's dominance five to ten years ago and demanding rigorous adherence to cross-platform standards?

One Opera user I've known since the late 1990s would be utterly outraged when a web site worked in IE6 (but not Opera)... now he only develops WebKit stuff and says "I don't care about the other browsers, since WebKit is OSS."

 

[ImmortalWarrior]

I don't know why the "whole Webkit thing" annoys you. It was a BS cop out from Google in the first place. Their mission statement (if you want to call it that) for Google Maps for mobile browsers is this:


Google Maps on your mobile browser - Official Google Mobile Blog

It annoys me in that the industry isn't targeting the cause of the problem as I described, but rather turns it into a pissing contest.

 

[brmiller1976]

It's the story of the "post-Microsoft-dominance" era.

Microsoft, for all of its failings in the 1990s, was unfailingly cross-platform. Windows NT even had a component called "services for Macintosh" that allowed the OS 7, 8 and 9 Macs of the day to seamlessly operate on a Microsoft network. Office was always updated cross-platform and Microsoft even developed IE for Mac OS -- it was the best Mac browser of the time.

A lot of people didn't like that Microsoft's platforms were winning over the expensive, closed Macs of the era (which cost 5x as much) or the esoteric Sun/IBM Unix stuff. They raged against MS democratizing technology and putting it in the hands of users, and "unfairly" gaining a monopoly by making tech affordable.

They said they wanted "choices." They exhorted people to "think different."

Then, when they became dominant and powerful, they forced everyone to "think exactly the same and only the way we allow you to" and moved to eliminate all choices -- especially when it harmed Microsoft and its users. This hypocrisy was "justified" by Microsoft's success in the 1990s, when the company destroyed the notion that computers should be expensive, proprietary and hard to acquire. "A computer on every desk" was Microsoft's big ideal, and they delivered with the best mix of form, function, price and design.