As we mentioned
the other day, we're setting out to improve our profile design. Our goal is to make the profile simpler, relevant, and to give users a greater degree of
control.

Today we're going to give you the first look at the profile. We're still
iterating on the final design, so design elements and names can
change. However, these screen shots will give you a good idea of what
you can expect from the new design, showcasing some of the new additional
integration points.

• Expanded and interactive "Wall," where users can generate their own content, friends can write Wall posts, and applications can publish Feed
  stories
• Additional tabs on the profile, where users can feature their favorite
  applications
• Profile boxes, which appear in the narrow column, separate from the
  tabs
• Profile action links

Notice that the profile is wider and we're organizing the user's profile information into a series of tabs. The "Wall" tab displays everything from Feed stories (including application feed stories), to Wall posts, posted items, updated status messages and others. The recent activity on profiles is highly interesting information to users and we are relying on applications to provide stories that are meaningful and engaging.

The About tab is where users will keep their personal information, now in a
more structured way.

In this example, Photos has its own tab, and similarly, users can create
custom tabs for your applications. In this way, your applications will have
much greater prominence on a profile, nearly at the top of the page.

All profile boxes will appear in the narrow column of the profile. We're
providing other mechanisms for increasing distribution. And users can always
rearrange the order of their profile boxes in the narrow column.

Profile action links get displayed by default. More can appear, and their
appearance is based on user interaction with the related applications.

You can keep track of what's changed in the
href="http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Platform_Changes">Facebook Developer Wiki. We've also set up a Facebook Page, called
href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Facebook-Profiles-Preview/21073243776">Facebook Profiles Preview, where we're informing our users of the
upcoming changes. We encourage you to become fans of the Page. We'll be
sending weekly updates on the profile changes to fans of Facebook Profiles
Preview as well as posting new screen shots there.

Almost all of the existing FBML tags and API methods will continue to work.
In the coming weeks, we'll be releasing a few more API methods and FBML tags
that are specific to the new integration and distribution points. There
will be a transition period for you to adapt your applications to the new
design before we launch the redesign to users. We'll give you lead time and
existing functionality won't change immediately.

As always, we welcome your feedback. Send your comments or questions to
href="mailto:developer-feedback@facebook.com">developer-feedback@facebook.com. Please put [new profile] in the subject line.

http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=88

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