I have grown weary of Facebook’s changing ways.
Remember when it was just about connecting with people you don’t see all the time? And when it was just open for college students? Now, all of a sudden, my friends’ parents are asking me to join a mafia with them or something. It’s not the same. So what do you do? Do you just “delete” your Facebook profile and forget about it? Nope. You get Facebook Fixer.
Facebook Fixer lets you clean up your home page and display what you want. As an example, here’s my Facebook home page in Google Chrome:
Looks about right. You got your stupid filter on the side that nobody uses, and a bunch of suggested “friends” based on the idea that if you know one person, you know everyone that knows that person too (or my favorite – “You both went to Wisconsin Milwaukee”. Hey, that’s great, so did, like, TWENTY THOUSAND other people last year!!). Now, check out the same page (with a couple updates from friends, apparently) in Firefox with Facebook Fixer:
Notice: the filter pane is gone. So is the suggestions thing. The “Sponsored” pane is a new sight for me – AdBlock Plus usually kicks those things out. Facebook must have figured something out to sneak that one back in. Hopefully an update will take care of that in the near future.
Now, is that worth the trouble for you? No? Well, how about a few more features:
- When you roll your mouse pointer over any small profile picture, a full-size version of it will pop up.
- You can translate text automatically with Google Translate – useful for my friends in Taiwan whose statuses are always in Mandarin.
- Detach the top bar – instead of having to scroll to the top of the page to click on “Home” or “Profile” or do a search, the top bar will move down the screen with you.
- Add birthdays to your Google Calendar with one click!
- About a billion other cool things.
To get Facebook Fixer, you need to first install Greasemonkey. Then you can head over to the Facebook Fixer website and click the “Install” button. That’s it! Now when you hover your mouse pointer over the “Settings” button at the top of Facebook’s page, there will be a “Facebook Fixer” settings option, and you can customize it to your delight.
Do you know of any other really cool Facebook tools? Share them with all of us Nerds!
Tom is an entrepreneur and freelance writer, working out of his apartment full-time, or wherever he feels like taking his laptop. He doesn't take long European vacations or blogs on the beach. He's an Average Joe that took control of his life. He wants you to do the same.
