Facebook And Netvibes Now Optimized For The IPhone
Both Facebook and Netvibes launched new iPhone-optimized versions of their sites yesterday. Netvibes, the customizable homepage widget site, offers a slightly more spare version for the iPhone with slimmed-down text-only widgets to speed load times on the EDGE network.
The Netvibes iPhone site is still in beta, but point your iPhone to m.nv1.netvibes.com and check out the RSS reader which is one of the fastest we’ve used on the iPhone.
The Facebook iPhone site is also very well done and indeed it’s possibly the best iPhone site we’ve seen — in many ways it’s better than the main Facebook site.
Four tabs across the top of the screen give one click access to your main page, your profile, friends and e-mail. A series of buttons below each tab provide most of the options for each section. The only slightly disorienting aspect of the navigation is that clicking a tab tiggers the familiar sideways navigation — panels slide to the left. Typically tabs don’t relate to horizontal responses, but perhaps that’s too nit-picky for an iPhone UI.
Whatever the case, the interface is fast (the EDGE network has been having issues this morning so I only tested it on wifi) and the overall experience is much better than trying to use the main site on the iPhone’s diminutive screen. In fact, for common tasks like checking your Facebook e-mails, it’s far easier on the iPhone than the main site.
For a detailed look at the various Facebook screens check out the extensive photo tour that Chris Messina put up on Flickr (which is where the above screenshot comes from).
