12/24/2022 0 Comments Leave facebook beta testing![]() The first big mission of the new testing framework was rethinking how users navigate on mobile. That means that while Facebook collects a bunch of testing data that sways its decisions, it won’t chuck out its intuition or a design it believes in just because the data says so. We’re ‘data-aware’ or ‘data-informed’,” Sharon says. When added up, Facebook would test major changes with between five and ten million users at a time - more than many apps have in total. We’re shipping full production-ready versions that could become the main experience”. Sharon was adamant that these different tests aren’t half-baked betas, saying “We’re not shipping a subpar version of our app. We’ve all been Guinea pigs in the mobile testing framework since March, but none of us knew it. This way Facebook can try out tons of variations all at once, without multiple app updates or any confusion for users. However, you’re grouped with a few hundred thousand other users and you all only see one version of the app. How it works is that when you download Facebook for iOS, the app actually contains multiple different versions of the interface. So over the past year Facebook quietly built out a new native mobile app testing framework and sprung it into action in March to build the app update released today. To solve the problem on Android, Facebook launched a beta tester club in June 2013 that let it use Android’s more permissive stance towards developers to let power users sign up to play with potential new features and catch bugs.īut iOS refuses to sully its simplicity with such beta capabilities. ![]() ![]() It wanted to push changes and get immediate feedback. Having to wait until its monthly app update cycle came around to test new versions of its apps was torture for the typically nimble company. We use testing kind of religiously in both the web and HTML5 apps, and this is something we wanted to get back to as much as possible.” Sharon explains “One thing we lost was the ability to do testing. It was a huge win for Facebook.Įxcept that it had to sacrifice HTML5’s testing abilities. Suddenly their app store ratings shot up, and people read twice as many News Feed stories on average. So Facebook ditched HTML5 and rebuilt the apps entirely on native infrastructure last Summer. Mark Zuckerberg would later say on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt that “ Our biggest mistake as a company…was betting too much on HTML5″. It made Facebook’s apps sluggish and unresponsive, which hampered engagement, ad views, and their app store ratings. That meant it could push a News Feed redesign one day to 5% of users, then to everyone a week later, and then fix a bug a few days after that.īut beyond testing, HTML5 was a disaster. “With HTML5 we’d ship code every single day and be able to switch it on server-side”, Facebook product manager Michael Sharon tells me. The latter let it ship code changes and tests to users on the fly without the need for a formal app update. On mobile, it hoped to do the same thing, so it built its iOS and Android apps using a Frankenstein combination of native architecture and HTML5. It would collect data about usage and performance to inform what to roll out to everyone. It invented the “Gatekeeper” system to let it simultaneously test thousands of variations of Facebook on the web with subsets of users. HTML5 Was Slow, But Boy Could It Testįacebook has never been afraid to try new things and see what sticks. ![]() The real story today isn’t the app, though, but how it was made. You can see video of the redesigned app here. But Facebook didn’t flatten everything, leaving some texture and depth to the feed. It even works between sessions so if you leave Events open in More, your parties will be waiting there at the ready any time you tap More.Īs for aesthetics, Facebook has also made the top title bar translucent and redesigned many of its icons like the one for messages to match the line and arc style of Apple’s new mobile operating system. The new More button essentially opens tabs over the top of the feed so your state and context are preserved. Previously, if you opened your drawer and switched to look at Events or Photos, you’d lose your place in the News Feed or whatever else you were doing. More reveals your app bookmarks just like the old drawer did, but will save your place in whatever product you browse. It appears on the far right next to one-tap buttons for News Feed, Requests, Messages, and Notifications. For the little ones, the new tab bar delivers a super-charged “More” button.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |