After a lot of consideration and testing, we've decided to keep the navigation bar on the left hand side. We've heard people's concerns about this issue, but we believe this UI provides the right balance of usability and consistency for site navigation. Likewise, it provides extensibility for some exciting features we have on the way. - Bret Taylor

Excellent work guys! Kudos. - Stu Andrews from twhirl

We also plan on fully launching http://beta.friendfeed.com/ very soon. We appreciate everyone's feedback through this beta-testing process. - Bret Taylor

looks good guys - no more room icons? - MG Siegler

You guys are totally on the ball. FF rocks! But can we still use the old UI? (like the opt out option Facebook gave us...) - Mona Nomura

The icons were small enough and the screen real estate issues real enough, we decided to 'nix the icons. The longer names and stats performed better in our testing - let us know what you think after using it for a bit. - Bret Taylor

Mona: when we launch fully, the beta UI will replace the old UI entirely. - Bret Taylor

think i like it more without em, less distracting on the left to right scan - MG Siegler

Ok, thank you Bret... - Mona Nomura

Without the icons it's impossible to distinguish between rooms if several rooms have the same name, like Mozilla Firefox at http://beta.friendfeed.com/rooms... and Mozilla Firefox at http://beta.friendfeed.com/rooms.... Not good :( - Ray Metzen

Sweet. - Kevin Bondelli

Thanks. - Alexander Carlill

Nice update... - Steve Chou

Ray: maybe it's more confusing that there are two competing rooms with the same name than there not being room icons. Why are there two rooms with ostensibly the same topical focus? - Mark Trapp

I'm a happy camper. - Jason Wehmhoener

Looks better. Still prefer the navigation on the right but I'll live. - Akiva

very nice! me likey. - Rob Diana

@Brett: It looks great! Congrats and thanks for listening! - Alex Popescu

I'm a big fan of the current design. The right rail was cluttered before. I kinda miss the icons, but not much, rather have the room stats. Great update! - Steve Isaacs

Exciting features like http://beta.friendfeed.com/e... ? :) - Christopher Galtenberg

Christopher: they gave a reason during the first change; it was for people with wide screens who did not like the huge gap between the sidebar and the content. It's also more usable and expected to have navigation elements on the left side. - Mark Trapp

Yeah, Mark, I read that. In one place. And it wasn't referred to again. And it's not a meaningful reason. And it's not an "exciting feature". So pardon my musing aloud. - Christopher Galtenberg

i do like the rooms w/out icons better, and the time since last update is good. i did like the "x posts, x comments today" for the rooms as well, though - Trent Olson

I'd like it if I could drag people over to my lists. - Scoble, Alex Scoble

THANK YOU for brining the room stats back!!! But I do miss the icons... it was easy to "navigate" to the one I was most in the mood for easily... I can't have my cake and eat it too?? - Lindsay

Whoa ... This one gets a blog post! - Charlie Anzman

I don't like it. Anyway, can you bring back the option to expand the Rooms list? I don't want to go to the All Rooms view every time I want to check a specific room, - Alejandro

Alejandro: why not add that room to the navbar? Click on prefs and you can add as many rooms as you like. - Mark Trapp

I guess I will have to get used to the left bar. The issue I always have is the flow, and that the real estate is taken up as you scroll down even though there is nothing in there. I think I can live with it though ;) - Dion Almaer

At least 2 people will definitely read this :) Enjoy ... and keep it up! Charlie http://anzman.blogspot.com/2008... - Charlie Anzman

@Mark, I just did that. It looks awful without the icons. Being able to expand the list would be more useful. I don't understand why that was changed. - Alejandro

Probably the best beta I've seen yet. Previously I've gone back to the standard view and only used the beta view when I wanted to access my lists; this one may be a sticker. - Ontario Emperor

Better, but I'm not yet ready to jump. - Jill O'Neill

how soon until it starts to look like GMail :-) - Shakeel Mahate

@Brett: thanks for continuing to be so responsive! - Bill Sanders

thank you for bringing back those stats. :) - edythe