Best "FF Beta layout flip" post yet ;) - Daniel J. Pritchett

Nice! Much less mouse movement to get to the important stuf! - Logical Extremes

Not a fan of the smaller width. 15 characters doesn't let things be descriptive, and the chopping off of letters for anything longer makes certain labels unreadable. - Mark Trapp

How did you find time to blog about something that JUST happened? - Eric @ CS Techcast

A little notice next time! =) - FFing Enigma (aka Tina)

@Eric: Bret's LinkedIn profile says "Founder at FriendFeed" - Daniel J. Pritchett

Ooh, much better on the left! - DeWitt Clinton

Mark: yah, that has been the source of much discussion here. The horizontal real estate vs. more text issue is tough. Let us know how you feel after using it for a bit. - Bret Taylor

Note: "My Feed" is now "Me" - Hutch Carpenter

looks great :) - Travis Parsons

Good update, the left side is more natural for navigation - Steven Cains

Don't like it at all. Don't like the left-handed navigation and I don't like the return of underlines beneath user names (although I can easily get used to that). - Akiva Moskovitz

but still no links to My Comments/Likes, or count :( - Tim Hoeck

Ahhhh! Just when I got used to the right side.. - Shawn Farner

Hey thanks I just notice this ... coool!! - Susan Beebe

@Bret - can you text wrap in the left panel? - Hutch Carpenter

i've gotta agree with Akiva, not too keen on it am afraid. Back in 15 to explain why. - Zee.

See the light underline under links now - Hutch Carpenter

Shawn: sorry about the change. That was also a source of much debate, and we really appreciate the fact you took the time to try out (and get used to the Beta interface). The navigation on the right was causing enough people headaches, we are confident moving to the left is the right decision, but please let us know how you feel after using it for a bit. - Bret Taylor

I don't mind it on the left, but it's too small, most of the room names are cut off. :-( - Kol Tregaskes

I like it Bret... KEEEP.. (word wrap on groups, etc) - Susan Beebe

Should I switch to friendfeed beta - orionstarr

Bret: I wonder how much help the room icons are at this size. If you removed them, that'd give more space for room labels. Not to be a naysayer though: I love everything else about the switch. Left is a change, but it's for the best. Love the icons! - Mark Trapp

Its odd with the bar on the left after I've been used to it being on the left. But, unlike the Facebook beta this is actually good. - Mathew™

Whoa. This just happened like a few minutes ago. Nice. It's just the same thing but on the left, right? Yeah. Cool :) - Dustin

@Mark: good point. The icons were easily recognizable in our testing, but perhaps the tradeoff is not worth it given these space constraints. We will iterate on the room name truncation issue - if these first few minutes are any indication, that is the main issue we need to address before full deployment. - Bret Taylor

I second the "navigation bar is now too small". Definitely improvement on this is needed. - Cesar Cardoso

Bret, cool. Appreciate you looking at it again! Like I said, everything else is looking great. - Mark Trapp

I like a couple of things in the new beta: 1/ the Post interation; 2/ the links becoming more visible. Changing the navigation from right to left side is something that people will probably get used to. Anyway, I do think that you must do something about the listed Rooms whose names are not fitting in. - Alex Popescu

Bret: I love the beta and like the changes to the sidebar EXCEPT for which side it's on. Would love to have a preference. - Steve Ivy

Daniel J. Pritchett, noted. I guess sometimes you just don't know who your talking to. - Eric @ CS Techcast

As Tim Hoeck asked, where are My Comments/Likes for the week/all-time? - Mark Wilson

I would love to have a hide on that navigation sidebar if it stays on the left. Like the 'u' shortut for full-screen in Google Reader. It also feels a bit cluttered in the top left... maybe just because i'm not used to it yet. - nadim

Posted this in another thread, but figured I'd put it here as well: the one thing I really like, although it seems like it's too aggressive right now, is the segregation of "inactive rooms:" I guess once rooms become more and more popular, not having any posts in a day would make sense to qualify as inactive, but I consider some rooms on the list active, even if nobody posted in them today. But the concept is great. - Mark Trapp

Well, apart from freaking me out when I clicked refresh, I think it's going to take some getting used to having the nav bar on the left. Not a massive problem, though. Can I just add another vote for wrapping the room names. Having it cut off like that does NOT work. - Brad Brooks

I like the nav bar on the left, and I like the new post and search parts. I do miss the tabbiness of the navbar though. I think it would be nice to still have some of sort of background change indicating what part of the site you are on - me, groups, etc. Keep up the good work! - Robert Felty

Just noticed when you subscribe to someone now, it asks which list you want their feed in. ++ - Steven Cains

WIN! - metageoff

I think the content on a person's page is too narrow. With the navbar at the left, the user's info box at the right, there is plenty of room left in the middle for the main content, but it uses little more then half of it. - Peter

Actually, I really like this navbar on the left an a person's info box on the right, directly at the top of the page. With the older beta, it was stuck below the navbar items, and that was very distracting, being on someone else's page, and having my own things listed at the top. Now if Hao Chen does another rewrite on the user profile script, moving it to the right too, I'd be perfectly happy with this design (for now). - Peter

Prefer it on the right - Reading the stream is my primary objective and having the menu/filter etc on the left takes my focus away from this as I have to learn to skip over it. - Andy Davies

Peter: are you using Firefox 2 by any chance? We may have a rendering bug on profile pages that makes it narrow in FF 2. We are fixing now, but that may be the issue. - Bret Taylor

i like the new layout, but I think people are reacting to a couple visual things: 1. the vertical divider line/shadow is very strong, so you see it instead of the right pane. 2. the logo overlap treatment pulls the panes together a lot, making readability in the top left area hard. can you make it less dominant? - Michael Herf

totally agrees with Andy Davies : the ergonomy of reading is more important priority than the ergonomy of click. The navbar should be on the right side (no visual pollution on the area used for reading) - Oaksun

it is better to let user control which side it is - terababy

love it on the left - Noah Carter

Great update - Steve Chou

I also prefer the sidebar on the right. Giving the option to change it would be good. And now you can't expand the Rooms list without going directly to the all rooms view. mmm... - Alejandro

The gray dotted underline for user names looks a little too subtle on this laptop, but I think it's an interesting idea. Perhaps a little bit more contrast, though it depends on the screen settings I guess. It might also be helpful to have the same kind of link style for other links which are currently still unlinked, like the blog reference in a "posted at ..." message. - Philipp Lenssen

Loving the direction of the beta so far. I think the menus on the left is a lot more intuitive but currently could use to be a little wider. One idea for saving space might be utilizing the slide out/slide in functionality that is now available in google maps. That way it can be out of the way for those just browsing page by page etc. - Tsega Dinka

(narrow content) Bret, yes I'm using FF 2. I see it is fixed now. Thanks. - Peter