Facebook Messenger gets UI refresh; stock app also gets update treatment
Facebook Messenger has been updated in the Google Play Store, and it brings with it some nice UI changes that Facebook hopes will make conversational reading more natural.
They’re using speech bubbles to separate text, the ability to swipe left to see who’s online and available to chat, improved speed and reliability, text messages, the ability to add friends to the top of your favorites, and more.
The stock Facebook app also got some update love, though it’s not quite the native UI refresh we’ve been waiting for. They’ve also updated its Messaging UI to reflect the Messenger application’s new look, as well as a new button in the News Feed screen to see who’s available to chat, the ability to see who’s active before sending a message, and stability improvements.
Facebook says it is all part of the company’s new update strategy. Instead of letting users wait long periods of time for new features and bug fixes for the sake of having bigger updates, the social networking giant will instead issue more frequent updates that’ll sprinkle in new features and bug fixes for a more progressive approach.
I love it, and hopefully the truly big update — the one where the dastardly HTML5 nonsense is put to rest — will be out sometime soon. Head to the Google Play Store here and here for Facebook and Facebook Messenger, respectively.