Facebook: Changes to Tab Dimensions on Pages Likely Coming in “Late July”
Last October, when Facebook laid out its Platform Roadmap for the next several months, it announced that the dimensions of custom tabs on Facebook Pages would be changing from 760 pixels wide to 520 pixels wide in “late 2009/early 2010.”
As we’ve been covering since, this is a pretty important change for all agencies and Page managers to be aware of, because this means that all Pages that have created custom tabs (either application tabs or landing tabs designed around promotions) will need to be updated to fit the new width. If not, they might look broken or poorly designed.
However, as late 2009/early 2010 has come and gone, there has been some confusion in the market about what Facebook’s timeline and intentions are, since the changes haven’t yet come to fruition as indicated. In fact, the developer wiki page on this topic still says the changes are coming in early 2010. This morning, a new round of confusion was set off when an FBML image caching bug confused some Page owners into thinking their tabs had suddenly been resized overnight.
A Facebook spokesperson tells us this morning that the changes to Page tab widths “will likely happen in late July, but we’ll give Page administrators at least two weeks notice before making this change regardless of when it happens.”
Facebook has been communicating this to its larger clients. For example, Nike, who recently started running what Facebook says is “one of the biggest Facebook ad buys ever” around the World Cup, already has content in the new narrower format on its Nike Football page.
So, just another heads up to all Page developers out there: you’ll want to create a 520-pixel width version of anything you plan on running on your or your clients’ Pages after mid-July. We’ll update you as Facebook issues more guidance.
May 27th, 2010 at 11:20 am
Hi Justin,
According to the May 3rd roadmap update, the canvas page width is no longer changing, it’s all a bit confusing.
Under FAQ on this page:
http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Roadmap_Canvas
“Will the widths of canvas pages change?
No – for the moment we are not planning to change the width of canvas pages.”
May 27th, 2010 at 11:31 am
Hey Dave,
I believe the link you reference above regards Application canvas pages.
The changing tab widths apply to Facebook Pages.
Hope that helps clarify,
Justin
May 27th, 2010 at 11:42 am
Wait, so are the dimensions changing or not? If Nike has changed their dimensions then does that mean we should start changing dimensions?
May 27th, 2010 at 11:47 am
Hey Joe,
Yes, now would probably be a good time to start changing dimensions. Nike did.
Justin
May 27th, 2010 at 11:58 am
Hi Justin, Thanks for the post. We’ve been trying to get information on this ever since we began rolling out the new dimensions for our page clients in Late January (after receiving confirmation from someone on the Platform team that this was *really* going to happen), but it’s been hard to get specific dates. We have had a couple of clients complain about the width being so narrow and ask to have the larger dimensions until the change is made, but this information further validates our decision to only develop at 520px. I’ll be sending this post off to our clients. Thanks again! – HG
May 27th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
Yes, Justin is right. Canvas applications are still going to have a max width of 760 pixels, but application tabs such as Static FBML are being reduced to 520 pixels.
After Facebook announced this in October, we at HyperArts decided to be proactive and just start designing at the 520px width for application tabs. We didn’t want to get caught flat-footed with a bunch of tabs that needed triage if Facebook just pulled the switch without honoring their promise to give developers a couple weeks notice.
May 28th, 2010 at 2:15 am
[...] Link: insidefacebook.com [...]
May 28th, 2010 at 8:53 am
Does anyone know the reasoning for this change to 520?
Does anyone know what Facebook plans to do with the extra “White” space (ads?)
May 29th, 2010 at 7:53 am
I am guessing that the “extra white space” will be used so other peoples ads can be displayed 2 or 3 across the page instead of one up down the page.
If I am buying/selling space ads, wouldn’t I pay more/charge more to get placement in the top row?
Also in the Dec09 annoucement was a notification that the sidebar on wall/info tabs on fanpages would also be eliminated.
Anybody got an update on that?
Thanks!
May 30th, 2010 at 5:32 am
[...] This has been identified as a Facebook bug and has since been fixed. However, there is news that Facebook will be changing it's FBML tab dimensions from 760px to 520px sometime in late July, [...]
May 30th, 2010 at 8:02 am
[...] Facebook: Changes to Tab Dimensions on Pages Likely Coming in “Late July” [...]
June 3rd, 2010 at 12:19 am
Facebook probably did very good research on this. Think it will be an improvement. We will see soon.
July 14th, 2010 at 11:50 am
I’m no mathematician, but if they haven’t announced it yet – but its supposed to happen by “late July” – then they’ve blown another deadline, haven’t they?
October 13th, 2010 at 10:28 pm
[...] from the fact that these guys need to update their welcome page to comply with Facebook’s new 520px page size format, these guys have a great, simple and engaging welcome page that does exactly what it’s supposed [...]
December 10th, 2010 at 5:24 am
Is the change made? Can’t remember of see anyting different these days.