iPad版Facebook应用：瑕不掩瑜

    说来有点令人难以置信：Facebook竟然花了一年半时间才推出官方iPad应用程序，而从去年起，可靠的Facebook非官方应用客户端Friendly for Facebook就已经开始流行。据称，官方应用的开发工作几度延误，有一个内部测试版还出现过外泄。不过直到今天，Facebook的8亿活跃用户才终于可以开始下载这款程序。

    它的性能到底如何？我们来对它做个快速测评，看看它到底是无与伦比的杰作，还是令人失望的败笔。

    拜苹果公司（Apple）的iTunes所赐，下载这个程序简单方便，但是一开始运行起来就不是这回事了。刚发布的这一版中存在漏洞，导致我们的“新闻订阅”服务（News Feed）每两三秒就自动重启一次，而重启也无济于事。还有人称，下载所需时间很长，或者干脆出现程序崩溃（Facebook建议碰到这种问题的用户重装程序）。客户端不断出现的重启问题致使“新闻订阅”，乃至整个程序都无法使用，直到第二天程序更新后才解决了这一问题。

    登录界面似乎经过优化，可供多账户使用，完成登录后，就转到了主界面屏幕上，所有可选功能项都列在左侧一栏，比如：“新闻订阅”，群组，应用程序，账户设定及其他应用。选择“新闻订阅”，它就立刻出现在屏幕右方；点击左侧，它就会以全屏模式显示。一条细长的，类似于Facebook桌面网络体验的蓝色工具栏以及最近更新的iPhone应用程序始终显示在屏幕顶端；屏幕上还有一个Home键以及通知、消息即好友请求等图标。

    新界面算不上眩目，但简洁干净，非常好用。智能手机的Facebook应用程序会突出短信文本，以便用户能持续发送，而iPad版的Facebook应用程序则充分利用了平板电脑较大的屏幕，可以赏心悦目地展示图片和视频。

    用户可以选择好友标签，亲眼看看两者的不同效果。在iOS版本中，Facebook可滚动显示的好友列表以显示好友的名字为主，名字边上的好友头像尺寸很小，有时候甚至难以分辨。而在iPad上，好友头像则会弹出，轻松放大9倍，因此用户会首先看到头像，然后才会留意名字。因此，用户更有可能在这个界面上多逗留一会，端详好友的头像，而在手机上进行类似操作时，就不会这么留意头像了。

    在iPad上浏览相册也更有乐趣。搓擦条（scrubber bar）能让用户快速浏览几十张照片。用户还可以选中某一相册中的某张照片，捏住将其放大，或是返回查看所有照片。

    It's hard to believe that it took Facebook a year-and-a-half to release its own iPad app, given that solid third-party alternatives like Friendly for Facebook have been available since last year. The app had reportedly been delayed several times and a build even leaked. Yet only now are the social network's 800 million active users able to download it.

    So how is it? We gave the app a quick to spin to find out whether it was the one to rule them all, or just a disappointment.

    Downloading the app was simple thanks to Apple's (AAPL) iTunes, though initially getting it to run wasn't. A bug in the first release caused our News Feed to constantly refresh itself every two or three seconds whether we wanted it to or not, and restarting didn't help. Others have reported issues like long loading times or crashes. (For them, Facebook recommends that they reinstall the app.) The constant refreshing on our end rendered the News Feed, and really the whole app, unusable until a software update the next day fixed the problem.

    Once you're past the log-in, a screen seemingly optimized for multiple accounts, you're shuttled over to a home screen that presents all your selectable options in a left-hand column: News Feed, Messages, Groups, Apps, account settings and so on. Select the News Feed, and it appears instantly on on the right-hand side; swipe to your left, and it'll occupy the entire screen. A slim blue bar resembling Facebook's desktop web experience and the recently-updated iPhone app remains up top the entire time, with a home button and icons for notifications, messages and friend requests.

    The new look isn't very flashy, but it's clean and works extremely well. Where the smartphone apps emphasize text for on-the-go consumption, the iPad app leverages the iPad's larger screen and highlights photos and videos beautifully.

    Select the friends tab, and you'll see for yourself. In the iOS version, that scrollable list of Facebook friends is dominated by friends' names alongside tiny, sometimes inscrutable, profile images. On the iPad, those images have been blown out to easily nine times the size, so your eyes gravitate to the images first, and the names second. Hence, you're more likely to linger and glance at profile photos you probably wouldn't have cared as much about if you were doing the same thing on your phone.

    Wading through photo albums is also generally more fun on the iPad. There's a scrubber bar that lets you quickly skim through tens of images. You can also pinch to zoom in as well as to jump back to all the images in a given album.