by a friendly female voice. "Welcome to Paper," she
says. And, for many folks, Paper will be a welcome
change indeed. But, before we tell you why Paper may
be preferable to the full Facebook app, let's establish
just what Paper is -- it's only been a few days since it
was revealed to the world, after all. Generally, Paper is
a news-reading app that shows users the stuff they
already get in their News Feed, in addition to stories
pulled from content partners (including Engadget, of
course) by Facebook's in-house team of tastemakers.
After its verbal welcome, Paper shows you a beautifully
shot, superfluous bit of marketing video. (We've already
downloaded the app, right? We don't need to be sold on
it a second time.) It then tells you how to set things up.
Should you already have Facebook installed on your
phone, there's no need to punch in your login info
again; Paper knows who you are and takes you straight
into your notifications. We thought that was a bit odd,
but we suppose seeing your notifications first is
something that some users might appreciate.
Regardless, upon dismissing the notifications window,
the app then asks you to select the sources of news that
you'd like to see. Your News Feed is, of course,
selected by default, but you also get 19 other topics to
choose from. Most are the usual subjects -- news, tech,
sports, food, photography, etc. -- but there are some
more unique choices, such as Ideas, which Facebook
describes as "a daily, in-depth look at one standout idea,
event or personality," and Equalize, which is news
about eliminating gender bias and discrimination.
Naturally, you can shuffle these topics any time you
want in the settings, and you can also arrange them in
any order you prefer.
Once you've chosen the stuff you want to read about,
Paper takes you to its central navigation screen. The top
half is occupied by the aforementioned topics, and will
be very familiar to users of Facebook Home's Cover
Feed. It cycles through stories from a particular feed
every five seconds, and a tap takes you directly to the
full post, where you can like, share or comment on it.
The lower half is made up of a series of cards that are
the full feed for a particular topic. Navigating through
topics and individual stories is accomplished by swiping
left to right, and switching back from individual stories
to the main feed is done by swiping down from the top
of the screen. After the app informed us how to
navigate, it became second nature within a few minutes.
We found the UI to be well thought out and intuitive.
Our only quibble? We wished we could navigate among
the posts that were cycling through the topic pane,
instead of having to wait for the seemingly endless
seconds required for the app to show posts we wanted
to read, but missed the first time round.
In the lower carousel, individual stories are presented in
a trio of ways: a white card with a tap-able link and an
image, a card that is all image (truncated, à la Facebook
Home) or a white card with a sub card that can be
unfolded to view the full story. We've been unable to
detect any rhyme or reason as to which posts get which
stylistic treatment, and each type of card behaves a little
differently. For instance, the two types of white cards
look similar -- the only differences are that the first type
I mentioned has a grayed-out "Continue Reading" link
and there's an absence of text immediately beneath the
image -- but they behave differently enough to be
annoying. The first style requires tapping on the link to
open up the full story on its associated web page, while
swiping up on the picture simply moves the image
around until you release, whereupon you get the full,
non-truncated version of the image. Performing the
swipe on the second style of white card allows you to
unfold the story into its web page directly (similar to its
competition, Flipboard).
Meanwhile, the full-image cards incorporate some
motion control: Users can tilt their phones left and right
to see the undisplayed portions of the picture. It's a
largely useless addition to the app, in our opinion,
simply because you have to turn the screen away from
your eyes to view the far edges of an image, which
means you're seeing it at an oblique angle. Plus, you
can simply tap the image or turn your phone (or iPod
touch, in this editor's case) to landscape mode to see the
full picture head-on.
Aside from providing you with news to read, Paper also
gives you limited access to Facebook in general. You
can post to the social network, of course, and it lets you
view your and your friends' photos, pages and posts.
There's also search functionality and access to Groups,
Events, notifications, messages and friend requests.
Plus, you can change your account and privacy settings
from within Paper, too.
We think that for many folks, Paper can serve as a main
mobile Facebook access portal. As far as its UI is
concerned, Paper puts the regular Facebook app to
shame. Its swipe-based navigation is easy to use, and
Paper reduces the amount of visual clutter on screen to
a fraction of what you see in the full FB app. Because
of that, it's better able to highlight the content that most
users come to Facebook to see in the first place. That
being said, Paper doesn't give power users full access to
FB -- we couldn't find a way to access our Groups and
apps, or Pages we administer, and that's just the
shortcomings we found in our first few hours using the
app.
In short, Paper's perfect if you're looking for a more
beautiful way to consume News Feed content, but it
may not suit your all your needs if you require more out
of your social networking app.
Via: Engadget
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