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Design Social Networks

The Facebook UI Drives Me Nuts

I promise to end this “all Facebook all-the-time” run of posts soon. I’m exploring the new interface and reminded again of how so much of the Facebook experience drives me nuts. Don’t get me started on the “mail” feature and how un-mail-like it is.

Tonight I was exploring “notifications” — they are  under the new little “globe” to the left of the search box.

Each item in the notification list has an “x” beside it. In a normal web world, clicking the “x” would make that object “disappear” — call it delete or “have read” but clicking the x would remove the item from the list. Not with Facebook:

Facebook Notifications
Facebook's "X" Means Kill The Entire App, Not The Item Instance

“This will hide all notification from this application.”

WHAT application? WTH is “Feed Comments”?

I don’t want to “hide” whatever application generated the notification. I want to “x-out” that instance in the list of 50 pending notifications. How does Facebook know that I have READ one if I can’t delete it? (It doesn’t – it assumes all are “read” when the Globe is clicked.) This is as stupid as Google Buzz and our inability to collapse comments on a thread.

It makes my head hurt.

By Kathy E. Gill

Digital evangelist, speaker, writer, educator. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles! @kegill

One reply on “The Facebook UI Drives Me Nuts”

Hey! Does that mean that if I x out somebody’s notification about sending me a gift or whatever, I’ll never see something like that again? And can I configure the “most recent” aka “live feed” to not show who just whatever’ed in some game? THAT would be priceless. But overall, I’m with you. FB is just weird. I’m there because you pretty much have to be right now … but that isn’t an endorsement of the way it works, or doesn’t …

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