Facebook Usability

The Facebook logon screen now has a long-awaited “remember me” checkbox, but crazily a huge message appears that moves the Logon button down half an inch. Is this a deliberate move to make sure people read the message?  To users, message boxes are just something that interrupts the flow of an application, thus “stopping the proceedings with idiocy“.

Display the message if you like; anyone who can’t guess what it’s telling them will know after the first time they read it (if they do read it, regardless of any attempt to put it where the logon button was a second ago), just don’t interrupt the very first thing I do to get onto your site.

I prefer sites that don’t require me to sign up at all, so I can go right to work, and decide to sign up later on if I want to keep my changes.  FogBUGZ has a wonderful core concept of having no required fields. Opting instead for the “get it in, worry about the detail later” scenario. I like it (but the anal part of my brain refuses to let me enter a case without at least having a title ).

C’mon Facebook, you’ve got too many users to skimp on the usability of your application. You’re doing well, don’t spoil it now by getting lazy.