[joe_the_user]

The screen-shot looks OK to me but I'm not a professional designer - the only thing that occurs to me is that div-sizes might be slightly awkward or the type might be a bit small.

One problem with any Facebook alternative where you have just one "reference application" implemented is that people will glance at the page and judge it by looks regardless of how configurable it is. That's a problem with any UI sadly enough.

I guess that's why I like the idea of creating layers and protocols to allow easy, multiple implementations. IE, my idea of five minutes ago - plugins for Drupal, Wordpress and Phpbb to ties multiple sites into a single large social network. The issue of design might then not be front-and-center.

[michaelchisari]

Actually, Appleseed's framework abstracts out the user-facing code into a "foundation", which can be removed and replaced (and even inherited) without changing any of the underlying server-side logic.

So there's no reason I couldn't implement a radically different UI like this without changing any of the base code. Theoretically, you would even be able to switch between the UI's with a simple button.

http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Facebook-Facelift-Home-Profil...

[joe_the_user]

How does the foundation talk to the server?

Do you have to use php?

[michaelchisari]

If you wanted to build a new foundation, you'd do it in client-side JavaScript. You communicate with the server through a REST API.

[joe_the_user]

Have a link describing the REST API?

[michaelchisari]

Not yet, actually, it's still in flux, and documentation is sparse to non-existant. The next few releases will be ironing out a lot of the implementation, and I'm going to prioritize a guide for how to get started with it.