Gave in

Somewhat reluctantly I started using Facebook a couple of weeks back. For me, joining Facebook meant leaving LinkedIn as I only have so many cycles to spare for social sites. Anyways, Facebook is a big advancement over LinkedIn, if nothing else but the fact that you can actually do something almost useful after linking up your friends. Facebook as a platform is the big hype right now, deservingly it seems.

In all its AJAX glory, one really neat interface feature at Facebook is the “Add To Friends” link.

Click it normally, and an AJAX popup opens in the same window allowing you to add a friend.

Click to open in a new tab or windows (like with Ctrl+click) and instead a new page will open with pretty much the same dialog. Giving the user the choice, very friendly and clever.

For someone who wrote AJAX like web sites at the time it was still called DHTML, the thing that truly stands out with the sites like Facebook, RTM and Gmail is how well the dynamic stuff fits in your normal work flow, rather than being show-offs like we used to do in the good old days.

Technorati Tags: facebook, ajax