How to Use the New Facebook Layout

Facebook has made some radical changes today to the layout of the site here are some of the new features you will find:

The News Feed
Top News and Most Recent stories are now in a single News Feed view. Top Stories appear first you will need to scroll down to see the recent stories.
All the news now appears in one place with the most interesting bits at the top. If you are a Facebook regular you will see the most recent stories first. If you haven’t visited the site for a while you will see photos and status updates at the top. They will be marked with a blue corner in the top left of the update. Photos are also now bigger making them easier to see as you scroll through the feed.
In addition to posts from friends and Pages you follow, you can see photo tags, friend requests, event updates, group memberships and other activity in your News Feed.
Top Stories
Top stories are things which have been published since you last checked in that Facebook think you will find interesting. These too have the blue corner and may be different depending when you last checked the News Feed.
So how does Facebook generate your top stories? There are lots of factors which determine what becomes top. Factors include your relationship to the post writer, the number of comments and likes, the type of story it is.
If you see a top story that isn’t interesting you can click on the arrow to the top right and click 'Unmark as top story'.
Controlling Your News Feed
You can manage your News Feed by grouping your connections in Lists. Click the name of one of your friend lists which appears on the left side of your home page to view only stories by people in the list you’ve chosen.
You can hide story types by clicking the drop-down menu that appears when you hover over the arrow in the top right corner of a story you want to remove from your stream. Then, select an option from the drop-down menu:
"Hide story" will remove the individual story
The "Hide all by" and "Unsubscribe from" options will remove the post and prevent all future stories from a person, Page, group, event or app
"Report story or spam" will remove the post and help keep your News Feed clear of similar stories in the future
To unhide stories from a person, Page, group, event or app click the pencil logo which can be found to the left of the News Feed link in the left sidebar of your homepage. Click Edit, any people, apps, Pages and groups you have hidden will appear. Click the X next to each one you'd like to unhide. Removing something from the hidden stories means they can appear in your News Feed again. Click Save.