Naevius Facebook Layouts for Windows

Why bother with Facebook if your "face" looks like everyone else's? There's no reason your Facebook page can't be as stylish (or as junky; why not?) as you want it to be. We looked at Naevius Facebook Layouts, a free tool that works with Internet Explorer. It makes customizing your Facebook look as easy as picking a theme.

A strange error message prevented Naevius Facebook Layouts from opening immediately after installation, but the program ran normally when we clicked the desktop icon, and subsequently, so we pretended we hadn't seen it. It opened with a simple theme selector displaying a list of layouts and a preview window. The themes are heavy with popular culture references, from Hello Kitty to Euro footie, the NFL to High School Musical. A link to the Naevius Web site gives a description of the product, but there doesn't seem to be any way to add more themes, update the list, or create your own and add them. Of course, this tool is designed not only to make it easy to customize your page but also to prevent disastrously botched customization jobs, which are all too common on Facebook, so it's supposed to be foolproof. We made our selection, opened Internet Explorer, and logged on to our transformed page, which looked much better for the change. Changing themes is as easy as closing IE, opening Naevius, and picking a new look.

Still, many of this tool's themes were marked 2009, which is a sell-by date in pop culture, and we question the durability of Hannah Montana's appeal; at some point, this tool's list will surely be either updated or hopelessly dated. The color-oriented themes are pleasant, though, and Bob Marley, Batman, and "The Simpsons" are pretty close to timeless. If you'd like to update your Facebook page's look but don't have the time or skills to do it yourself, try Naevius Facebook Layouts. You might find just what you're looking for.