How to Get Old Facebook Back
Much to the annoyance of many of its users, Facebookis always changing. The recent Timeline revamp is the last in a series of tweaks to the social networking service, some good, some bad, and some just plain ugly.
Do you like the news “ticker?” How about the revamped chat? Does the highlighted news style bother you when you miss out on gossip?
We have identified five older Facebook features and functions that we used to enjoy, and found extensions for Google’s Chrome and Mozilla’s Firefox browsers that get them back.
We know we can’t stop progress in the long term (and we wouldn’t want to), but for the sake of some short-term peace of mind, we’re going retro with some tweaks to suit our preferences.
Let us know in the comments about any Facebook features that drive you nuts, and we’ll see if we can find a few options to “fix” them.
To compensate for the fact that it rearranges the order of your News Feed, Facebook now displays a constantly updated news “ticker” above the chat bar if you have it open, or the top right of your home page if you don’t.
This continually updating stream is a source of annoyance to many, while the edited news feed itself makes many Facebook users apoplectic with rage.
Facebook Classic will solve both these problems. In addition to nixing the ticker, it reverts your News Feed to chronological order. As a bonus, you can easily toggle it on and off.
This add-on for Firefox gets rid of the ticker, whether you have the right-hand side chat window open or not.
Facebook introduced its “Questions” service as a way for users to get more from their social circle — and to compete with up-and-coming questions services.
If however, you don’t give a flying hoot whether your cousin goes with the kitten heels or the peep toe wedges, you can vanish such annoyances from your stream with this handy extension.
Hiding Facebook Questions from your news stream is one of the tickbox options found in the comprehensive “F.B. Purity” add-on.
Facebook fancied up the way photos display with a new “theater” style, which makes each image a pop-up.
What was wrong with the old scroll-through-an-album method, we don’t know. But we do know a way to revert back.
This extension will get back the “previous/next” navigation, and nix the sloooow-loading windows.
This script works with Firefox for anyone who has Greasemonkey installed. It reverts your Facebook back to the old way of photo viewing, sans pop-ups.
Dear Facebook, what was wrong with old chat? Was it just too easy to see which of your friends was online? Too easy to ping someone a quick “hi?”
If you preferred the old way, this extension will disable the ticker and restore your Facebook chat to the little window on the bottom right of your screen.
This Firefox option won’t get you back the old version of Chat, but it will hide all your offline friends, showing only those available, so it at least addresses one of new Chat’s UI issues.
How many times have you posted a half-finished comment by pressing “Enter” too soon? Yeah, us too.
Call us old-fashioned, but when we’re publicly commenting on content, we like to be sure before we hit send. Having to press Shift+Enter to create a line break is just too much hassle.
This extension restores the “Comment” button, and maps “Enter” to add a new line. You can be sure you won’t post any witticisms until they read exactly as you intended.
For Firefox users, the easiest alternative is F.B. Purity. One of the many features this add-on offers is the return of the “Comment” button.
Let us know in the comments below what you dislike about Facebook’s current design.
Do you love or hate Timeline? Adore the Cover Photo space or wish it was gone?
Have your say and we’ll try and address the most popular issues in a forthcoming post.
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