Facebook is the most popular photo sharing site in the world, but its photo upload tool has always been clunky and frustrating to use. No longer, thanks to a prototype New Photo Uploader that will hopefully displace the current upload tool very, very soon. Instead of the slow, tough-to-navigate system that loads up thumbnails of every. photo. in. your. pictures. folder. by default (ugh!), this new version has navigation that looks a lot more like what you're used to in Windows Explorer or the OS X Finder.

Facebook ditched the old-school Java uploader they'd been using since 2005, and built a plug-in from scratch with newer tools. Aside from looking better and running a lot more smoothly, the new uploader can also run in the background, so you don't have to stop browsing while you wait for your pics to upload. The first time you try to upload photos after turning on the prototype, you'll be prompted to install the Facebook plugin. It doesn't take long, and it's well worth the extra 30 seconds to get a better, faster photo uploader.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

There's been a lot of blog hype about Google testing out a new, minimal homepage. It's true, some users have been seeing a Google.com main page with just the logo, the search box, and two buttons. If you're not one of them, but you want to try it out, here's how you can make it happen:

Go to Google.com and put this little bit of Javascript into your address bar:

javascript:void(document.cookie="PREF=ID=abac7a90f5a3784b:LD=en:NR=10:TM=1254990196:LM=1254990236:S=uB6F4jDnMP_DuxtT;path=/; domain=.google.com");

Then hit enter, and then reload the page. The top bar, language tools link, and all other extraneous text should be gone, but it'll fade back in if you run your mouse over the top part of the browser window. This really isn't that big a deal, now that practically every browser has a search box built in, but it's a neat little trick if you're someone who still uses Google.com often.

[via Google Blogoscoped]

On the heels of last week's release of @mentions and the new Facebook Lite, today Facebook announced "Prototypes".

Prototypes give users a chance to test out cool new applications and functionality "going on inside the walls of Facebook" and to provide feedback to the who built the prototypes, directly.

To begin testing and providing feedback, simply find any application available in the Application Directory that is marked as "Prototype". Some cool examples that have come out of Facebook prototype apps include Desktop Notifications for Mac, recent comments filters and enhanced event emails.

Think of Prototypes much like the recently released Mozilla Test Pilot; Giving users the chance to opt-in to new features not quite ready for primetime.

I rarely get as excited by a Web 2.0 app or service as I am by ProofHQ, which is an innovative and platform-independent way to manage the whole review and approval process for creative documents. At least for me, the most tedious part of the design process is getting feedback and approval. First you have to make sure the file is in a format that a client or collaborator can read (so that you don't accidentally send out a Word 2007 document to someone who is using Office 2003 and doesn't have the Office 2007 viewer software), then if you are sending something by e-mail, that the e-mail size isn't too large for their mail server. That process has to be repeated for every change or for every new element.

ProofHQ was designed to streamline the entire creative review process, making much of the above process unnecessary.This is how it works: You upload your proof, document or design concept to ProofHQ and enter in who you want to send the proof to. ProofHQ then creates a web-optimized, Flash-based proof that your reviewers or collaborators can view. They just click on a link in their e-mail and have access to the proof or document.

From there, they can add notes, draw in markup and immediately reject or approve a design. You can even embed a "Miniproof" in a blog or wiki, and any comments made either at that site or via the ProofHQ dashboard appear alongside one another. This makes it really, really easy to get feedback and collaboration from lots of different people. As the document creator, you can see who has reviewed or commented on a proof and instantly eyeball if something is approved or if you need to bug someone to give you an answer.

Welcome to Googleholic - your bi-weekly fix of everything Google! In this edition:

• Google I/O round-up
• Use Google to reference your JavaScript libraries
• Google Web Toolkit 1.5 RC
• Other random Google bits

Each day sees more and more Ajax tools, tricks, demos, and libraries come online. MiniAjax.com is a place that collects, on a very fluid and easy to browse page, all of the latest and greatest Ajax scripts that you can download and implement on your website.

There is a lot of good stuff to explore here such as:

• GreyBox - a simple window you can use to launch another webpage within your website
• Reflection.js - create cool image reflection effects
• Heatmap - a hot (pun intended) utility to let you see where users click on your website
• AjaxIM - a browser based IM client.
• and many many more.

The author says he'll add links to 60 more scripts in March. Better add this baby to your bookmarks!

Tuesday the good folks from the Yahoo User Interface team released version 2.2.0 of their much loved JavaScript framework. The exciting changes this time around include a browser history manager, a data table control, and advanced button control. These additions are all still considered beta and extend the huge number of components currently available in the YUI library.

The Yahoo User Interface, if you haven't played with it, is a massive open source JavaScript framework along the lines of Prototype or Dojo. The library is heavily documented and supported (featuring examples, forums, cheatsheets, and videos) and lets you easily bundle Ajax, calendar, tab, drag and drop, auto complete, and all manner of other cool functionality into your web applications.

More on the new version (including examples) after the jump.

You may or may not be familiar with Lightbox, a handy JavaScript library that lets you create very slick interactive image galleries very easily with plain old HTML and a little elbow grease. Lightbox is great, but not exactly svelte, weighing in at just over 100kb not including images. If that's a little hefty for your taste, check out Litebox, a drop-in replacement for Lightbox that looks like it and works like it but weighs in at less than 30kb. It pulls it off by swapping in the lightweight moo.fx which creates the same effects as Lightbox has but at a lower price. Like the original Lightbox, Litebox is free and easy to set up.

Sidewalk is a nice-looking Ajaxy web form builder. While it doesn't have very advanced validation options (just "required" or not), adding and arranging form elements is fast and easy and setting up a new form from scratch really does take just minutes. The drag-and-drop positioning, though becoming passé in the age of Prototype, is still cool, and Sidewalk forms can be embedded in any web page just by copying and pasting a bit of JavaScript, which I think is one of its greatest selling points. When someone fills out your form their answers are e-mailed to you as well as added to a web-based database where you can search the responses and export them to CSV. Sidewalk isn't without its limitations, though. One missing feature that might be a show-stopper for some is the inability to edit fields once they've been created. For simple text fields this isn't a big deal, but for radio groups or drop-downs with many options it's a pain to have to re-create the whole thing just to make one small change. Another limitation is that, unless I'm missing something, it's only possible to create one form per account. Sidewalk is free to try for 30 days, after which time your forms will remain active and editable, but responses will only stay in the database for one day. A more permanent account will cost you $7.99/mo.