Facebook iPad app surfaces in iPhone app, blogger says

Last month I wrote about an official Facebook iPad application, which is expected to be available soon. The app still has not made its formal debut, but MG Siegler of the blog TechCrunch, said he found the code for the app hidden inside Facebook's iPhone app.

Mr. Siegler, who said he gained access to the new app by sifting through the Facebook iPhone code, could not confirm if the features he discovered show the final version for the app, but in a blog post, offered some details of the interface and design.

Facebook did not respond when asked if this was the company's official iPad app.

Mr. Siegler said the application's navigation was "great." Compared with the company's official iPhone application, the iPad version offers a left-side menu system and the design takes full advantage of the large screen real estate available on the Apple tablet, he said.

As I discussed in my previous post, Mr. Siegler said that the photo viewing feature within the app was highly optimized for the iPad, and that navigating Facebook photos felt natural and very similar to using the built-in photo viewer on the iPad. The new application is also primarily built using HTML5, the Web programming language.

It is still unclear when the official Facebook iPad will be formally unveiled. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and chief executive, recently said the company plans to introduce a number of new products in the coming weeks. We can only hope the iPad app is among them.