Most people who are on Facebook have a love-hate relationship with the hugely popular social network, particularly when it comes to rolling out new features. What the social media giant does is test out new features on a random subset of users before slowly rolling it out to the public. So if you’re one of the “lucky” ones to run into this new functionality on the Android app, you’ll notice that opening links within now leads you to a built-in web browser rather than your smartphone’s default browser.
Of course the logic behind this feature is for you to never leave the Facebook app and stay on it for hours (and yes, some people really do!). So when you click on a link that one of your friends has posted on their timeline, it will not lead you to Chrome or Firefox. Instead, it will open in a WebView type of browser (just like some other apps do), and it also has a drop down menu of options like forward/backward, copy link, and save, that handy new feature rolled out a few weeks ago where you could save links for opening and browsing later on.
There is also an option to open the link in another browser or app. So it means if you want to “escape” from the Facebook app, it will take you a few steps more. The built-in web browser is useful if you get annoyed with having to switch back and forth between the Facebook app and another app, particularly if you rely on the social network to keep up with the latest news or life hacks or BuzzFeed articles. But if you’re not too fond of the Facebook app itself, then the new functionality would be another one of the numerous complaints against Mark Zuckerberg.
No news yet if Facebook intends to actually roll out this feature to all other users or if it’s just another one of their “experiments” on several thousands or millions of users. They just have to keep in mind that a lot of people still haven’t forgiven them for the current fiasco over forcing people to switch to the stand-alone Messenger app.
VIA: Android Police
since when a WebView is a novelty?