chopstickles blog

Since seeing a link to “the new” Facebook on Mashable.com i’ve had quite a few sneak peaks at the interface and what has changed in the design. From what I have so far seen it is rather impressive with very little flaws noticed. Although there is on there i’m not particularly fond of and thats what seems to be the heavier focus on the Mini-Feed, and how it seems to be mixed with the Wall. Although there is little buttons you can use to filter the content, I’d still prefer less focus on the Mini-Feed, and why can’t you even minimize it anymore.

One other improvement of significance I have noticed is the faster loading times of profiles as the profile application infestation seems to have ceased. There still is a few which appear on the profiles, but no way near as what there previously was on profiles.

Other things also include tabs separating key areas of your profile such as the Wall, Info and Photos, and quicker access to posting photos onto yours or other profiles.

There is still alot which I have yet to see so i’ll most likely be posting again when I actually have a decent amount of stuff to mention.

It’s that time of development again where I change the code base for the site. The newest transition will be away from any framework I created and instead to an outside built framework. The php framework which I have decided to move to is Zend Framework. The planning is still in the preliminary stages as i’m still continuing with research but the move begin to happen very shortly.

The reason for the move is because the framework I was using just doesn’t seem to function so well. There are various methods in the classes which could be reused but aren’t because of the initial way I coded it. Information on previous versions can be found in my post about the projects history.

Within the next few weeks i’ll be testing a basic implementation of the site as alot of it can quickly be moved over. The current features will just be the homepage, profile, user control panel and account areas. If all is well then after that move i’ll move the rest of it over, otherwise i’ll do some more testing to iron out any problems which may occur. All in all it may be a while before the site is running to a useable standard again.

Stay tuned…

This is just a quick post related to the previous entry I had on the Top Friends application being displayed.

The Top Friends application has now been enabled and the privacy changes have been implemented. Basically now it seems that you can only view a persons Top Friends profile if you are friends with them, otherwise you are now redirected to your own profile. If the person you visits had Top Friends installed and a public profile you still will not be able to view their profile unless you become their friends.

One less privacy hole on Facebook.

Although this may come as old news to some people, others may not have even yet noticed it.

On the 26th of June the Top Friends application was suspended due to a security and privacy breach. A week prior to it’s suspension I actually took some time to look into it and how it functioned and actually found it to be quite an interesting application. Although like many others it did strike me as odd when you could see the relationship status, interests and some other profile information of people who were set to private and didn’t have myself as a friend. This of course wasn’t on their actual profile instead on a sub-profile which was attached to the application where it would display basic information, the users display picture and other applications.

After looking around on the internet and news sites it seems that it will not be re-enabled until the security and privacy breach is fixed. I can’t yet find a place which states when this actually will be fixed.

Cnet Article:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9977762-7.html

Mashable Article:

http://mashable.com/2008/06/26/top-friends-disappear-facebook/