Facebook unifies mobile sites

Facebook users on the go will no longer need to remember two web addresses to log in to their accounts on the giant social network. On Friday, Facebook announced an upgrade that allows users of touch-based devices and feature phones to log in to a single site, m.facebook.com. “With the new m.facebook.com, users with high-end touch devices will see a rich touch-friendly interface; for users with feature phones, the site will look and work great," said Lee Byron, Interactive Information Designer at Facebook. Previously, Facebook built multiple versions of its mobile site: touch.facebook.com for touch devices, and m.facebook.com for less feature-rich mobile devices. However, Byron explained that having two sites presented Facebook’s engineers with two problems, the first of which involved limitations on file sizes for feature phones. According to Byron, these limited the use of CSS and JavaScript APIs on some touch phones. A second problem involved having to build a new feature multiple times across different code bases. “Honestly, we weren’t very good at doing this, so certain features were missing on different devices," he said. With the new m.facebook.com, he said every device uses the same framework, and the engineering team can move faster and build new features just once for every mobile device. “It also means that everyone can access the same features, whether writing messages or checking into Places. There will no longer be a difference between m.facebook.com and touch.facebook.com, we’ll automatically serve you the best version of the site for your device," he said. On the Facebook engineers’ side, he said the upgrade addresses the challenge of having to plan for thousands of different devices with varying capabilities, screen sizes, keyboards, and support for CSS and JavaScript. Under the hood Powering the new site is a UI framework based on XHP, Javelin and WURFL, to precisely target experiences and features to various devices. Byron said Facebook uses CSS3 and vendor-specific rules for display and animation, as well as new JavaScript APIs included in HTML5 for WebKit-based devices like iPhone and Android. “For other devices we can target specific issues. For example, some devices don’t have keyboards, or have limited means of navigating a page, tiny screens, or crippling browser bugs. We can customize our site in each case to deal with these issues and provide the best possible experience to everyone," he said. He also said this mobile UI framework will let engineers focus on building their product instead of supporting device edge cases. “We think it’s important to provide an excellent mobile Web experience. Now, whenever we launch new features on the mobile site, they’ll be available on any mobile browser, presented in the best possible experience. We’re excited to roll out the new m.facebook.com site to everyone over the next few weeks," he said. Meanwhile, 0.facebook.com, a stripped-down site, will use the same codebase as m.facebook.com as well, he said. — TJD, GMA News