I hate it. I love it! I haven't even scrolled down to the bottom yet. Hold on.......ok, it's good. :-)
- Jeff Eddings
Cheers Bret & team - it's feeling pretty good so far (which includes initial gut reaction)
- Christopher Galtenberg
Nice job. I can at the very least say it is a big improvement aesthetically. I haven't finished checking everything out yet, but so far so good.
- Rolf Schewe
I miss the ability to have a Firefox sidebar setup that just had my list of items scrolling past and nothing else along the side like this view: http://friendfeed.com/realtim...
- Justin Yost
Reshare will be back. Just an artifact of beta-testing, didn't make it in for this morning
- Bret Taylor
Definitely not looking for attention here, but I just don't like it.
- Nick
This real time integrated updates is pretty kick butt. Especially for comments.
- Gersham Meharg
Our settings vary to prevent things shuffling around excessively. We bubble up when someone you are subscribed to comments.
- Bret Taylor
I like the updating comments, but when it shifts what I'm reading out of the frame it's a little distracting. Overall, great work!
- Derek Coatney
also wish i can add links/pics/embed in the "comments"...for example, i'd like to include an image of my email from http://www.emailcover.com, but it only shows up as a link
- brainno722 (Peter)
Can you open an existing conversation in a new window?
- Barak B
1st look is good, like the real time...didn't make it to the bottom the first few minutes. Also the comment box drops down as I am commenting now...message got off screen ;)
- Sanne Buurma
please add keyboard shortcut for play/pause feed
- Ouriel Ohayon
Please, remove the gray background. Any color, but not gray.
- bnoise
Agree with Andy, dislike the fugly grey
- Sally Church
Barak: click on the timestamp to open a conversation in a new window.
- Kevin Mohr
Barack B : you can click the time and select open in new window.
- Simon Wicks
Just bring back the filters to the main feed. Other than that, it looks awesome :D
- Gerardo Curiel
Grey or not, rather think about what the beta has to offer in functionality
- Sanne Buurma
Please, bring back service icons near each post — it's very hard to scan information flow without them. Also hope you'll do something with new subscription module — it's unuseful while managing a lot of imaginary friends.
- Juras Vetrau
Wait, is the frequent shifting up and down of items I'm reading (i.e. the items in view) really supposed to work out well? I suppose you guys tried it for a while and you just got used to it?
- j1m
Peter, yep but thankfully the Cleaner FriendFeed GM script still works in Chrome and FFox, which does this for you.
- Kol Tregaskes
Don't like: broke my Blocks list, Block not available from Hover Menu
- Will Higgins™
Why Will Higgins have a superscript of "TM"? how typed in?
- Tony
it keeps the bad low-contrast grey on white text for comments that deters me from reading it. You made the main text bigger, now make the comment text black.
- Kevin Marks
Will: block will be back, just missing today, but it is not something we are removing (just something we didn't get in for this morning)
- Bret Taylor
I think you guys should really embrace the idea of hashtags. Let us add them to other people's posts, having various services auto-tag imported items, let us search on them using filters. Tagging is one great way for us to get a handle on the volume of information here.
- Kevin Kuphal
What's with the orange and the green on the side? Its a bit ugly if you ask me. Also, is there a way to change this, as well as make the beta permanent? (I like living on the cutting edge).
- darnell
I too like the orange and green. It's the blue I'm not sure about. :-)
- Daniel Dulitz
Yeah, but it clashes with the logo. Either Friendfeed needs to change their logo, or get rid of the colors. Or (even better) allow users to change the colors. :-)
- darnell
Looks horrible to me, I think we should have a customizable interface more like iGoogle, I like the idea though, just more customization, like sidebar customization, friend lists, realtime widget, chat widget, all movable and arrangeable, there sure is enough space etc...
- Kyle Weller
I'm with Kyle and Darnell - I like being able to customize my GMail colours, and having that feature on FF would be cool
- nouhad
Sorry, I don't like it. Real-time makes me nauseous still and the design is terrible.
- Lindsey is Fierce!
Yes, bring back service icons, somewhere. Also, the bigger font in entries doesn't look good.
- bnoise
Ignoring 71 previous comments... I really like the new design! One request: allow the pause button to follow my cursor as a scroll down the page!
- Chris Messina
Add a floating "COMMENT" feature at the bottom of each thread, so I don't have to scroll up to click "comment"... this is a weird experience in new beta UI
- Susan Beebe
@Ari: This is why I really think tagging is what they need to focus on. If we could each add #ffbeta or something to our own posts as well as others, you get the trending and other features that twitter already has. Combine this with filters and you really get some killer information management features.
- Kevin Kuphal
I really like having one UI instead of different modes (normal, realtime, miniwindow), but to support the old "mini window" experience, perhaps allow the right hand side bar with filters and subscriptions to be collapsible?
- Karl Rosaen
@Karl: API is key here. Twitter isn't massively popular because their website rocks. Twitter is massively popular because there's a massive layer of applications built on top of it. Build that for FF and you have the same potential growth
- Kevin Kuphal
I wish it could use more of the screen real estate of my monitor, given my normal window size, it has large amounts of unused space on either size of the content due to the fixed layout. Maybe a multi-column mode?
- Ray Cromwell
@Krishnamoorthy rooms I believe have changed to feeds beta.friendfeed.com/[room_name]
- Lou Paglia
the new design works better for me. I am sure there will be glitches, but so far so good.
- Sharon Hurley Hall
Is there a way to change my prefs over to to the beta so I don't have to keep entering beta.friendfeed...?
- Ryan Stanley
UI suggestion: there's a link to expand all comments, there should be one to collapse them as wel.
- Ryan Stanley
UI suggestion: after expanding comments you scroll all the way to the bottom reading the thread, then you have scroll all the way back up to click the Comment link. Why not have it at the bottom of the thread too.
- Ryan Stanley
Feature suggestion: FF needs a built-in way of referring to people publicly, just like Twitter's @. Perhaps use the same convention. But there needs to be a way people to address each other in public threads, so a user can make sure to be informed when people are talking or referring to them.
- Ryan Stanley
going to read through faq - roadmap of what made beta & what's going away would be nice - big concern for me is the lose of ability to expand lists to see individual participants - i find that one of ff's strongest features - that and block but i see from earlier in this thread that its will make it in later in beta (whew)...
- mike "glemak" dunn
A Pause button that follows you on page scroll could be more distracting than it's worth. But how about something like it appears upon a white space mousedown/mouseup event.
- Micah Wittman
Hmm, I tried to read this thread, but I never got to the bottom, because the unexpected shifts of the text just became too much after a while. Fundamentally, if the page keeps shifting up and down unexpectedly, it's hard to see how anyone's ever going to read it -- hence the many requests for a floating pause button, which would help. You could also imagine pause on hover. Being able to read down the page without having the text disappear seems to me like the #1 use case of ff.
- j1m
Of course, it's not really like you want Pause -- the real-time updates are great when they're below wherever the eyes are :-)
- j1m
I love the new UI! I'm a big fan. It feels a lot cleaner and more organized. The real-timeness doesn't bother me. It seems pretty clever about when and when not to refresh. Great job, guys!!! : )
- Jess Lee
Bret - Great job! There are certainly things to clean up before this interface goes to the main page. Rooms should REALLY be on the subscribed list on the right hand column. I would LOVE to be able to put Blank Lines in comments. I don't care if they count for a whole lines worth of characters (as opposed to a more common one character for the cr/lf) Blank lines make comments more legible and clear than just a runtogether paragraph.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
I don't like how the interface STILL loses my place if I subscribe to someone while posting a comment (or even reading it!) I should be able to subscribe to YOU while I read YOU and not lose my page place. The Page should need to be refreshed to reset everyone because of the new subscription.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
I don't know about the queued items, I like the real time feed, having selectable speeds instead of "over-caffination required mode" would be good. Most discussions this is irrelevant, but the discussion on tis new beta this morning (i.e. on scoble's feed) showed how insane that can be.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
The real-time-only feed in the beta is causing Safari 4b on my MacBook use up a lot of CPU cycles, hence depleting the battery faster. I'm sure FF3 will too. Please consider an "ECO Mode" similar to the current standard mode, which only refreshes once every few minutes, for those running their machines on battery power. Without such an eco-mode, and with the rapid-fire pace of live updates, I fear that I won't be using FFeed much at all. Certainly not leaving that tab open for hours on end like I used to.
- Siddharth Deb
I don't know if I've done something, or you guys did, but when I look here, I only have a few services setup in the account, when I go to the old interface I have a LOT more -I'm not certain that everything is feeding through? (i.e. I have Digg and Disqus set up, I see the correct list of icons on the old interface, but on the beta "settings" popup, No Dice. Even if this is irrelevant to the actual data flow, please fix this to make me sleep well at night. ;)
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
One more thing - Could we have a character counter in the comments? It would be REALLY nice, if my account is setup to post this comment to my twitter account, and it's going to post the link to this discussion, please Add the number of characters in the link (plus a space) to the total character count. That way I won't be truncating the comment and/or the URL when it gets to twitter.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Another thing: I used to be able to click the "More" next to a single discussion, and "Link to this discussion" Where is that? If this is an outmoded way of thinking please let me know. Otherwise, um...can we have that feature back?
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
Rob: the timestamp ("9 hours ago") is the permalink
- Benjamin Golub
do you need a techno dunce to help the average joe make sense of this?? haha...i love it...
- Lauren Shanahan
Very twitter like. But better due to nice conversational.
- xiawinter
I actually kinda like the grey... though it does look like it's an opportunity to let companies brand the background in some way.
- Frankie Warren
For cc to Twitter functionality, can the number of characters be a count-down instead of a count-up?
- Winston Teo
I'd like to second the notion that there should be a way to address an individual within a thread...the agreed upon "Rob:" works great, but maybe could be clickable so that there's no confusion as to which Rob or which Scoble you're talking to ;) (i.e. maybe a CTRL-Click or something on the person's name after their comment to start a new comment with their name at the beginning? )
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
The grey background looks kinda dullish, and it looks like someone ran out of ideas for colours..
- Winston Teo
IMO avatars occupy way too much real estate now, I liked the smaller ones better.
- ǝuǝƃnǝ
thsi is nothing on the new design, but after being on here all night with no attention to a down twitter, I am reminded of this: It would be nice if I could set the post to twitter for comments and likes a) permanent b) off or C) on a per comment/like basis -twitter users say this "yeah, when ppl I follow flood me with FF spam ... I usually unfollow ... even block if it irritates me enough." And I would like to be able to be easily selective of what gets put through, and it would get more GOOD attn for FF
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
please, for the love of god, move the "comment" link to the BOTTOM of the list of comments. seriously, am I the only one who can't believe this hasn't been fixed for so long?
- Dossy Shiobara
Great stuff! :-) FriendFeed does it better than Facebook. Please go real-time all the way for subscription requests and confirmatoions too.
- Nenad Nikolic
from twhirl
It's not bad, but I prefer the smoothness of the old one to the lines and edges in this new one.
- scott willeke
I love the new letter-counting post widget in the beta though.
- scott willeke
at first glance, find it much more readable than the old one. Pity there still isn't "my items that were liked or commented by others"
- Stephanie Booth
from twhirl
Stephanie: comments:1 likes:1 from:sbooth
- Justin Long
stephanie & justin - that is in the catch all http://beta.friendfeed.com/filter... - i went and liked/commented on something from each of you that had no other activity - you should both see that bubble up in /discussions...
- mike "glemak" dunn
LOVE THE NEW BETA ! the new filter is so powerful, more powerful if you could add "language parameter"!!
- foxmachia {山石}
still waiting for direct-to-room links on the right column, is it planned? (with lastupdated timestamps if possible)
- Kemal Hadimli
"Stain is a unique tea cup created by Bethan Laura Wood, a designer from the UK. At first, the cup looks like any other cup, but the natural staining that comes from using the cup reveals a hidden pattern." - found via Dee S.
- Kol Tregaskes
from Bookmarklet
I actually have this particular teapot -- the Sorapot, designed by Joey Roth. Imagine a teapot designed by Apple, minus the first generation bugs.
- Chris Baskind
from Bookmarklet
"FriendFeed is becoming more and more popular, and if you’re not on it yet, you’re in the minority." - this opening line is 100% false. why would you start your story with something so demonstrably wrong? it's just not necessary. in related news, this blog post killed my imaginary puppy
- @baratunde
The whole minority comment was definitely exaggerated, however, friendfeed is gaining momentum. Most my friends from college don't get the lifestreaming philosophy. Nice read.
- Joseph Rodgers
Gotta agree with Baratunde-- minority? not true!
- Andy DeSoto
That is what happens when one thinks themselves superior to others. Welcome the Demise of Maki.
- Igor The Troll יִצְחָק
Hope you're joking, Igor? :-) The article was meant to be a friendly jibe at Maki and more than anything a compliment about his work. I'm a big fan of DoshDosh.
- Brian Carter
Honestly it is up to Maki. While I have been an avid reader of his Blog for years, recently Maki has become very Special. I hope he can learn how to be humble. It is not about Mr. Maki. It is not about SEO or Social Media. It is about people and how we can help them. This is what Blogging is about, helping people.
- Igor The Troll יִצְחָק
i hate the way @replies work.. its a pita to figure out what the reply is about.. assuming you DO want to know. What is wrong with attaching the @reply to the original message, so you see them in the order the occurred, with the msg they were about? Isn't that how forums work and have worked for some time? If it ain't broke, don't mess with it.
- Tim Hoeck
Well, the @ link is approximate. Oft times, it points back to the wrong thing.
- Jauder Ho
Agree -- it's more confusing than helpful in my mind.
- Charles Barthold
it'd be nice for less ad hoc method to arise. @ replying to multiple people is kind of disfunctional, for example.
- felix
LOVE the way @replies work. it is finely tuned to show me EXACTLY what I want to see... conversations within my Twitter social graph. LEAVE IT THE WAY IT IS but explain it better...
- Elliott Ng
@ works fine for me -- just wish Twitter web would pick up @s anywhere in the tweet
- Shey, Jamaican of FF
I can see a book series coming. How to use Twitter, FF, Stumble, etc. etc
- Charlie Anzman
"@webaddict I like how you try to be more Politically Correct by using the term "Tard" instead of "Retard". Kudos to you, champion of civil rights! :) As for blog hits, I jump for joy when I get 100 visitors in a day!"
- Joshua Olson
Contrast the slow-building, strong ties forged in FriendFeed to the fast, drive-by traffic coming from StumbleUpon and Digg. Sure, the traffic is great. But you likely won't see those readers again.
- Maki
Frickin' Hutch. He will surpass us all.
- Louis Gray
Friendfeed does offer great nutritional value but at times I do like the empty calories I get from Digg. I still get nutrition in what I discover on Digg. In this light, I'm not convinced that Friendfeed has far more value. It's far healthier for me but I like cake, too. :-)
- Alex Williams
Stumbleupon is engaging to me only after the caffeine of two pots of coffee fills my bloodstream, while Friendfeed is engaging all day with or without the coffee. I also admire the minimal layout, which is easy on my sore eyes.
- eyeslitcrypt
Friendfeed better than SU, maybe since there seems to be more bloggers/influencers here. But me thinks FF can't compare to a Digg frontpage, which often gets you a good deal of links from very relevant websites. [BTW was pleasantly surprised to see people commenting on my FF stream... thanks!]
- Maki
It really is, & it has a great potential for growth. This is something which Web really needed & it could go mainstream easily. It is the second (& core) social layer of the social apps..
- Nikpay
I agree it has definitely filled a void as now instead of constantly searching I just come here for information and communication with like minded people!
- Joe Dawson
How did I miss this one? As a side note, it's interesting to see how "old tech media" which should be considered extremely important and influential, can be missed in this new media world. Some big tech cos would scramble to get coverage in InformationWeek. (Just thinking out loud)
- Louis Gray