Last week Facebook announced that they will be making some important changes to the layout of Facebook pages as well as removing some older features including boxes. These changes will begin on the week of August 23rd.

What does this mean? Well, the boxes functionality will be taken away (these normally sit to the left of any Facebook page) so any applications developed for the left of your page will no longer be tehre. As well as this the width of tabs will reduce down to 520 pixels.

In order to help ensure the process run smoothly, Facebook have provided a layout preview to help administrators see the exact changes that need to be made. Check out the image below of how Sign-Up.to‘s page will look.

As you can see, we’ll need to adjust the size of our newsletter data capture form and we’ll be doing this in time for the 23rd!

These changes will begin the week commencing August 23rd, which gives businesses (including us!) almost two weeks to ensure applications and tabs fit with the new format.

According to Facebook the reason for these change is to simplify user navigation and although these changes have long been anticipated, we’re left wondering what their purpose is? What do you think? Will these changes will make the pages look smarter and more user friendly? Let us know in the comments box below.