Tag Archives: Facebook

Friday Links: AT-ATs, nerdy vacations, and deadly sins

• 9 nerdy movie locations you should visit, just in time to make vacation plans for 2012.
• Edible gingerbread AT-AT.
• Stop Motion + Minecraft + Super Mario Bros = This video.
• Perfect secret santa gift for the chocolate-loving nerd in your life, handmade Space Invader chocolate bar.
• The most iconic weapons in video game history.
• Wired’s Geek Dad presents the 5 best toys of all time. It’s hard to find fault in this list.
• FTC and Facebook reach a settlement regarding user privacy abuse.
• Taxidermy Deer LEGO Kit a.k.a. $12 of awesome.
• Books for the geeky creative in your life.
• This isn’t so nerdy so much as the best thing I found on the Internet this week, The Rap Board. It’s super fun and will steal entirely more time out of your day than you anticipated.
• The seven deadly sins of StarWars.
• Swanky doodle, a nice story about Google’s doodles.
• Don’t forget you can give Toys for Tots to remember the Bucklin Boys.

Surprise! Facebook is breaking more stuff on January 1st

Facebook is updating their JavaScript SDK by deprecating three functions. The first function,
FB.Canvas.setAutoResize is going to be replaced with a new function FB.Canvas.setAutoGrow. These functions are used to dynamically change the size of your Facebook canvas and remove the scroll bars from view. If the function is not replaced your canvas will not be displayed as you expect. This change does not effect the FB.Canvas.setSize() function.

The other two functions are part of the FB.Data package of functionality (FB.Data.query & FB.Data.waitOn), and are used to query the graph using FQL. These functions will not be available to new applications and appear to be available for the near future. An alternative to these functions is to use FB.api() to make your FQL call to the graph.

For the full list and dates for Facebook changes look to the Developers Roadmap.

Wednesday Links: Because it’s a holiday week

• Hey! Don’t forget to sign up for next week’s free Facebook webinar.
• The Morning News’ Home for the holiday tech support will either make you laugh or cry or remind you of that time you shouted “you’re clicking wrong” at your sister while providing phone tech support.
• The Muppabet.
• Amazon has a nice Q&A with Neil Gaiman.
• Anil Dash: Facebook attacks the open web, becomes a badware site.
• What Ron Johnson learned from building the Apple Store. Basically, if you build it they will come. Eventually.
• From the EFF: Free speech is only as strong as its weakest link. Also, Battle for Internet freedom pits Hollywood against Silicon Valley.
• 10 internet memes that became commercials.

Nerdery webinar: Facebook breaking change; sky falling?

Don’t go breaking my app

Forewarning: Significant Facebook changes are coming

There are a number of significant changes coming to Facebook in the next few months. Many of these effect the code of your Facebook applications.

The biggest change is that on June 1, 2012, your existing FBML applications will no longer work and may ultimately be removed from fan pages by Facebook. From Facebook, “FBML apps will no longer work on Platform. All FBML endpoints are removed as of June 1, 2012.”

If you have an FBML application and you want to keep your application, it’s time to convert from FBML to a new IFrame application.

For December, there are a number of changes that will be implemented.

1. OAuth spec migration
This code change will effect the way your developers access a specific variable. Facebook has changed the variable name and now your developers need to reference this new variable name.

2. Deprecating Dashboard APIs
This code change only applies to you if your application is leveraging the Dashboard API in your application. This is typically not part of the garden variety Facebook applications that have been built. See a list of the API calls that are effected.

3. Apps on Facebook: FB.Canvas.getPageInfo must be called with callback
This code change only effects you if your application is using this method in the Facebook SDK/API. This is typically not part of the garden variety Facebook applications that have been built.

4. Removing Bookmark URL
This is an application configuration and code change. Facebook is removing the “Bookmark URL” from the application’s configuration. The “Bookmark URL” was a way to assign a unique URL to the link to the application icon in the left column. Facebook didn’t like the way developers were using the field by redirecting users. Now, if your application will use a bookmark there is another method, via code, to track the referral from the bookmark.

For more information go to Facebook’s Developer Road Map.

New Authorization login screen for Facebook permissons

Facebook is rolling out a new Permissions dialog flow, that includes a set of new screens your users will need to interact with when installing your application. The new dialog boxes include an area when you can provide a description for your users to read before they install the application and an easy-to-read list of the permissions your application will be requesting.

As the new Open Graph is rolled out to the public the permissions dialog box will also include a flow of recent posts from the application.

Like the old permissions dialog box, this only appears the first time the user interacts with the application.

The new flow includes multiple screens, the process is described below:

1. The user is presented with the “Introduction” dialog box.

• The user will see the application logo
• The user will see the permissions that are requested
• The user will read a description of the application
• The user will see a list of their friends that have accepted the application

2. The user will click the “login” button.

• If the user is already logged into the Facebook platform the user will be navigated to the next screen.
• This same dialog will appear if the user is authenticating to an application that is in the Facebook tab/canvas or if the user is on your own website that is using the Facebook APIs.

3. Once the user has logged in the user will then accepted the extended permissions. This dialog box has a text area where you can explain to the user why you need these permissions for your application.

So, this is pretty cool. Yes it’s an extra step, but now as an application owner you have more tool to inform your users about your application.

Read more about this on Facebook’s developer’s blog.

Friday Links: Geek books & Super Mario Wedding Invitations

• 9 essential geek books (according to Wired).
• 2011 Internet Trends.
• Electric DeLorean coming in 2013.
• The mother of all Hot Wheels tracks, it’s kind of like watching one of those Rube Goldebergesque machines.
• A Sesame Street video from 1984 has kids answering the question what is a computer?
• Dropbox: The inside story on tech’s hottest startup.
• Is Facebook making our brains bigger, and if it is can we teach people to stop abusing the exclamation point?
• How to spot a liar.
• Super Mario Bros. wedding invitations are just as awesome as you’d imagine.

Friday Links: A cool LEGO iPhone game thing

• Harvard Business Review says Facebook’s Timeline will impact your career.
• LEGO’s new game experiment, Life of George. This looks like a gob of fun.
• 4 classic ways to recession-proof your brand.
• Wampa-fur kicks from Adidas.
• ThunderLOLcats.
• A greenhouse made out of LEGO bricks.
• Floppy disc Imperial March.
• For your little nerdling: HTML for Babies.

Facebook breaking change to launch October 1

Facebook’s recent changes have been all over the news and the Internet, and while most Facebook users won’t care about the change coming on October 1, it does effect those of us who develop Facebook Apps.

On Saturday Facebook is upgrading their SDK for PHP and JavaScript to use OAuth 2.0, a new and more secure version of the OAuth platform. This is also what’s called a “breaking” change. That means all existing Facebook applications using the previous 2.1 PHP SDK and JavaScript need to be upgraded to the PHP 3.1.1 SDK or your Facebook App will no longer work after October 1.

One of the big effects of this is upgrade is the change to how apps access Facebook user information, which means that all Canvas and Page tab apps must convert to process signed_request (fb_sig will be removed).

Two other things to note:

• Apps that have been built using the Facebook PHP SDK 3.1.1 do not need to be changed.
• Apps that are using the old JavaScript library for authentication need to modify their code.

If you’re need to get working on these changes before anything breaks you can follow the steps from Facebook to make the upgrade.