But the more I use the new Facebook, the worse the design becomes.

I thought I was growing used to the badly chosen colours, and then I opened it this morning and it was like having a bucket of water thrown over my head. GOOD MORNING TEE, LOOK AT HOW BRIGHT AND UNFORGIVING YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE IS NOW is what it said to me.

And then I realized something else. I said yesterday that moving the notifications etc to the right served no purpose but I could live with it.

I lied.

Moving the notifications etc to the right did something that only occurred to me this morning: it breaks the first rule of page layout: Upper Left To Lower Right.

Like it or not, Facebook and others who think they are being ‘radical’, but the English language reads from left to right. And that means that, by training from the first moment we are taught to read or the first time we open a book even before we can read, if we learn in a left to right written language, we automatically look to the upper left corner of anything we look at to find the beginning or the most interesting information.

Facebook has apparently convinced themselves that the most interesting information on their page is…their logo and the search box. Really?

So, in fine Facebook form, they have continued to not think about their users and continue to think only about themselves.

Yes, okay, we don’t pay for Facebook. They have advertisers who do. I get that, I really do.

But why alienate people? Because if people stop using Facebook?

Advertisers will go away.

First it was Google Reader: glaring white with a bit of grey. So I moved to NetVibes.

Guess what? Then it was NetVibes: glaring grey with a bit of white and some black. Although not quite as bad as Google Reader. I can still use NetVibes.

Now? It’s Facebook. Grey boxes on a light grey background and, let’s not forget, the Facebook Blue upper menu bar.

Why?

Has the internet run out of colours? Did I miss a memo that said ‘Sorry, only grey, black and white will be allowed from now on’?

It, seriously, gives me a headache. It glares. It doesn’t flow. The eye gets stuck trying to figure out where on post ends and the next begins, never mind the columns.

It is bad design.

I can live with Facebook moving the various alert, notification and message icons to the right. I don’t really get the point, but I can live with it.

I’m not sure I can live with the grey on grey.

It really is giving me a headache.

UPDATE: Just after I posted this I updated to WP 3.8.1. And look at that! Black! Lots of black! The posting box is grey on grey, true. But the edges? A nice soothing black. Well done WP.