We’ve had the Facebook app on our smartphones and tablets for quite some time, and updating it has just become second nature, just as every developer who has made an app for smartphones and tablets would know. But the latest update for Facebook for iOS is unique. According to the Facebook blog, “We’ve rebuilt the app from the ground up, so now the app opens much faster and your news feed and notifications load right when you open Facebook.”
Do you get tired of swiping down every time you want to update your News Feed? There’s a banner at the top that shows the amount of new stories that have been posted to your News Feed, and you can just tap on your device to read them. Have you finished reading all the new things on your feed? Just tap again to go back to your News Feed. Opening and closing photos is now a lot easier too. “Tap on any photo and it opens right away. Pull down to close it with a single swipe.”
“To solve (the constant evolution of the app), we came up with a different plan to let you use the newest features without requiring you to update the entire app: a ‘fallback’ renderer. When the news feed team designs a new type of story, Facebook for iOS downloads something it doesn’t quite understand. When we detect this, we use a ‘fallback’ renderer to show the pertinent information in the new story in a format the app already understands. In the meantime, we create a new custom renderer and have it ready for our next app update,” the Facebook development team said.