For those people who mourned  having their  favourite applications relegated to the boxes tab when Facebook switched to the new design they can now access them even quicker regardless of where they are on the page because they are now built into the bottom  tool bar.

Facebook Shortcuts Are Back

Yesterday I noticed a new little box appear in the bottom left of my Facebook profile page and also that a few other things had be rearranged. Facebook’s design team must have been hard at work responding to the feedback from their users and thankfully they seemed to have listened.

My Prayers Were Answered

I wrote a long letter to Facebook pleading with them to bring this feature back and they seem to have answered my prayers. My own reasons were because without an easy way to get to functions that I use regularly I tended not to go there very much. I had stopped using a lot of my Facebook applications and no longer visited my group pages because it tool about 3 clicks and  2 scrolls  to get anywhere.

If You Can’t See It You Wont Use It

I had observed  a decline in group activity over the last 2 months  that had concerned me. Some of the best strategies for using   Facebook have involved  groups and they are one of the fastest and most effective ways to build a presence for yourself or your business on facebook.  Now I can have my groups button visible all the time.

Developers Are Still Suffering

For the thousands of Facebook developers who had their businesses wiped out overnight this might come as some consolation so long as users become educated about using this new function. They still suffer from the fact that they no longer get exposure on profile pages so the viral potentials are drastically restricted. How many will bother to update their old applications to conform to the new profile is still debatable. Inside Facebook writer Adam Lovallo wrote about some of these issues in a recent article about this   new bookmarking facilty

Welcome To The New Applications Menu

The applications menu is easy to configure just click on it and all the icons can be  dragged into the order you want them to show. Facebook have limited this to 6 options which is plenty for most users. Remember you can still place four other  applications on the left side of your profile page and also add applications  in their own dedicated tabs (not all applications support this function as third party developers need to redesign and resize their boxes)

Finding New Applications

You can find new applications by clicking on the edit all button, this will take you to a page where you can edit all  the permissions for your applications and if you click the browse more applications button you will be taken to another page where you find all the latest applications neatly divided into categories.