When I saw Facebook’s New Photo Viewer for the first time, I remember thinking, “is this really necessary?’
And I know I’m not the only one who is being ingrate to Facebook for this so-called TheaterBox.
I mean, seriously, how did this design replace the previous one? True, now you don’t need to leave your current position in the profile or news feed you are viewing, but the user experience is awful here. The light box annoys the eye and basically it is just a bad visual that doesn’t fit the overall design of the site. Also, pictures are displayed in smaller format, and any writing on the page becomes illegible.
Luckily, you can remove &theater from the end of the URL or simply click F5 to get rid of the TheaterBox/Lightbox/whatever. And for puritans there are a few browser plugins and extensions that will automatically remove the ‘&theater’ bit like Facebook Lightbox Killer for Mozilla Firefox and No Thanks, TheaterBox for Google Chrome.
But still, Facebook should stop trying to fix or improve things that don’t need fixing or improving. There was nothing wrong with the basic page browser that we all know and love, was there?
