A blog about design, code and some other stuff

A couple weeks ago I’ve posted about some issues that I had while developing applications that runs inside a Facebook tab ( http://blog.millermedeiros.com/2010/05/facebook-you-are-doing-it-wrong/ ) and now I’m going to talk about “hidden features” that I’ve found..

Facebook documentation doesn’t explain what is available inside a tab and how to access the API from a tab, the only page that talks about this subject is really vague and doesn’t really help unless you already knows how the system works… (they may delete this page anytime soon since they are deprecating the old documentation)

Facebook deleted the old documentation about the Javascript API but it wasn’t really helpful since it was only about Facebook Connect apps and not for tabs.. Everything was accessed by the FB object and you don’t have access to this object inside a tab since they replace all function and variables names for “security reasons”… The new Graph API also doesn’t work inside a tab (as of May 2010) so the new documentation won’t help either.
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So, I’ve been delaying this post for a couple weeks, I was trying to finish my first Facebook app before posting the bugs and undocumented API that I’ve found while developing a Facebook tabbed app (application that runs inside a tab) and helping some of my co-workers with another projects involving Facebook.

Let’s get started, recently many big companies started to invest a lot of money on “social media” and to use Facebook as one of their platforms to engage with consumers, and the way they usually do this is by adding new tabs to their profiles using it almost as a micro-site. Here are a few samples: GAP, Adidas, Axe and many more..

My first complain is about the way that Facebook setup tabs, why the hell a tab needs to be an application? why everything is an application even being outside Facebook (Facebook connect website) or something that you don’t want other users to install on their profile or access through a canvas page? why does the tab works completely different than a canvas page or a Facebook Connect website and have different restrictions? why is it so hard to get started and why the documentation doesn’t explain which methods are available on a tab? – many questions, no answers..
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