Bright Spot in the New Facebook Profile

If you haven’t heard, Facebook is getting ready to launch a major overhaul of its profile pages.  Many have discussed the advantages and disadvantages of the new design (and I’ve contacted Facebook about a problem with the feed layout), but I wanted to give a few kudos to Zuckerberg & Co. for at least one aspect of the new design.

If you’ve seen my comments on other blogs, you probably know that I’m not happy with the JavaScript+IFrame approach of many OpenSocial applications.  (Yes, I know about the REST API – but look at Friend Connect, the majority of current apps, etc.)  When I first hit View Source on the new Facebook page, I was sorely disappointed to see almost no content and tons of script.

But then I disabled JavaScript, and to my delight, discovered that I could use the new profile just fine, thanks to its developers using the magic of progressive enhancement.  I may take issue with Facebook on a number of issues, both in terms of code practices and otherwise, but I’m at least glad to see them paying attention to an important (in my opinion) accessibility issue.

Now if they could just do something about memory leaks with Facebook Chat…