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Hallo Olly,
Here are all the posts from the Developer Blog in the last week.

The Next Step for Facebook Credits

Montag, 24. Januar um 20:50
Published by Deborah Liu
Facebook Credits is a virtual currency that enables fast and easy transactions a
cross games on Facebook. With Facebook Credits, people enter their payment infor
mation once and can buy, earn and spend safely across lots of different games. F
acebook Credits is currently used in more than 350 applications from 150 develop
ers, representing more than 70% of virtual goods transactions volume on Facebook
.
Starting July 1st, we will require all social game developers on the Facebook ca
nvas platform to process payments through Facebook Credits. All developers keep
70% of the revenue from virtual goods transactions using Facebook Credits. Altho
ugh we are not requiring developers to use Facebook Credits as their sole in-gam
e currency, we are offering special incentives to those who do (see below for de
tails).
Over the next five months, we will work closely with developers to onboard those
who are not yet using Facebook Credits, collect feedback to improve the product
, continue to innovate on the user experience, and help developers grow their re
venue on Facebook. We're excited to give Facebook users the confidence that when
they purchase Facebook Credits or receive them as a gift, they can spend them i
n any game on Facebook.
Over the past six months, we've worked closely with many developers who are usin
g Facebook Credits as their in-game currency to provide a seamless user experien
ce and drive increased ARPU. We are now introducing special incentives for devel
opers who choose this level of integration. These developers will receive early
access to product features and premium promotion on Facebook, including featured
placement on the Games Dashboard, premium targeting for ads, and access to new
co-promotion opportunities.
Many of our partners have seen great results so far with Facebook Credits, inclu
ding Zynga, Playfish, CrowdStar, Digital Chocolate, PopCap, Arkadium and others.
To learn more about their experiences or get started integrating Facebook Credi
ts, please visit http://developers.facebook.com/credits
Deb Liu, a platform marketing manager at Facebook, is excited that Facebook Cred
its is moving out of beta.

New updates and best practices for implementing Registration

Dienstag, 25. Januar um 20:55
Published by Paul Tarjan
We launched the Registration plugin in mid-December to help streamline the way u
sers can sign up for accounts on your site, and connect those accounts with Face
book. We've received great feedback from some of the sites that have integrated
it so far, and added support for additional validation options to make this easi
er to integrate with more advanced registration flows.
New advanced features
We’ve added custom client side and asynchronous validation to the Registration plu
gin.
To validate fields and provide custom error messages whenever a user blurs a fie
ld or submits the form, you can now use client side validation on the XFBML vers
ion of the plugin. Simply pass the name of a single global function as the onval
idate param to <fb:registration>. This function will be called whenever a user b
lurs a field or submits the form.
Example:
<fb:registration redirect-uri="http://developers.facebook.com/tools/echo"
fields= [
{"name":"name"},
{"name":"foo","description":"Type foo","type":"text"},
{"name":"bar","description":"Type bar","type":"text"},
{"name":"facebooker","description":"Pick Paul","type":"select","options":
{"coder":"Paul","pm":"Austin","partners":"Cat"}},
{"name":"check","description":"Check this","type":"checkbox"},
{"name":"date","description":"Dec 16 2010","type":"date"},
{"name":"city","description":"Calgary","type":"typeahead","categories":
["city"]}]
onvalidate="validate"></fb:registration>
<script>
function validate(form) {
errors = {};
if (form.foo !== "foo") {
errors.foo = "You didn t type foo";
}
if (form.bar !== "bar") {
errors.bar = "You didn t type bar";
}
if (form.facebooker !== "coder") {
errors.facebooker = "Pick the geeky one";
}
if (!form.check) {
errors.check = "Check the little box";
}
if (form.date !== 12/16/2010 ) {
errors.date = "That isn t the launch date";
}
if (form.city.id !== 111983945494775 ) {
errors.city = "That isn t Calgary, Alberta";
}
return errors;
}
</script>
If you have to check something on your server (e.g. if a username is taken), you
can use async validation to return null and then use the second parameter to re
ply with any errors.
You can learn more about these advanced features and view complete examples by v
isiting our documentation.
Results & Best Practices
A wide variety of sites across the web including eBay Classifieds, Car & Driver,
ReverbNation (select “Fan”), Chegg and others are using the Registration plugin to
effectively allow users to register with their Facebook account and find their f
riends on the site. Use the following best practices to increase conversions:
• Streamlined Login flow. After users complete registration, sites automatically l
og these users into their site whenever they are logged into Facebook. You can d
o this by calling the getLoginStatus method.
• Using the right Login button. If you’ve implemented Registration, it’s important th
t you also add the following Login button wherever you allow users to login to y
our site: <fb:login-button registration-url="<insert your url with the registrat
ion>" />. This button ensures that users logging in are signed in appropriately
and redirects users that haven’t registered to the Registration plugin url (regist
ration-url). More about our recommended user flows here.
Paul has been busy registering for thousands of sites with the registration plug
in. Keep them coming!

Building More Secure Applications for Users

Mittwoch, 26. Januar um 15:30
Published by Alex Rice
At Facebook, we devote significant resources to improving the security of people’s
accounts. We have a variety of internal systems that detect and block suspiciou
s behavior, and today we announced the ability for people to access Facebook ove
r a secure connection with HTTPS, which keeps account activity private even when
using Facebook from a public internet access point or wifi network.
This secure option is rolling out to users over the next few weeks, and will be
available on an opt-in basis in the Account Security section of the Account Sett
ings page. After enabling this feature, all of a user’s activity on Facebook will
be served over a secure connection.
As part of this change, we have introduced a new field called “Secure Canvas URL” in
the Developer App so Canvas iFrame developers can also serve their apps through
a secure connection. When users with HTTPS enabled visit your app, we will load
the iFrame using the secure URL you specify. If you do not provide a secure Can
vas URL, we will display a confirmation page to let HTTPS users switch to HTTP a
nd continue to your app.
We hope you’ll begin to offer your apps via HTTPS to help us heighten the security
of Facebook users’ accounts. We also encourage you to enable the feature on your
own account to secure your apps. We welcome your feedback in the comments below.

Faster, Simpler Requests

Donnerstag, 27. Januar um 02:00
Published by Derek Brandao
Requests are one of the key communication channels on Facebook Platform. Today,
we re announcing a new, faster Requests Dialog that is easier for developers to
use and enables people to send more relevant requests.
We’ve made the new Requests Dialog perform better by making it faster, removing an
unnecessary step in the process, and getting rid of the allocation system that
previously influenced the number of requests each user could send. Instead of im
posing limits, we’re focused on promoting high-quality, relevant requests and cont
inuing to evolve our spam detection systems to eliminate abuse.
The new Requests Dialog is easy to implement, as it uses our Platform Dialogs fr
amework. In addition, the dialog was designed to work for IFrame apps, and no lo
nger requires server-side FBML. You can generate the Requests Dialog with the fo
llowing code:

<html>
<head>
<title>My Great Website</title>
</head>
<body>
<div id="fb-root"></div>
<script src="http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js">
</script>
<script>
FB.init({
 appId: YOUR_APP_ID , cookie:true,
status:true, xfbml:true
});
FB.ui({ method: apprequests ,
message: Here is a new Requests dialog... });
</script>
</body>
</html>
Which will display the following to the user:

The new Requests Dialog is part of our ongoing effort to make the Platform exper
ience more relevant, social and efficient for users so they can get started with
your apps and share them with friends easily. While the old FBML-based Request
Dialogs will continue to work for some time, we encourage you to update your app
to support the new version and move to iframe based apps, as previously announc
ed. Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Derek is a engineer on Facebook Platform.

HTML5 Games 0.1

Donnerstag, 27. Januar um 08:55
Published by Douglas Purdy
This evening we hosted a standing room only HTML5 Tech Talk with Charles Jolley
(SproutCore) and Laurent Desegur (Zynga) that was joined by over 900 people on t
he livestream.
Before the event, Cory Ondrejka (who runs our game platform engineering team and
also spoke at the event) posted HTML5 Games 0.1: Speedy Sprites to our Engineer
ing Blog.
Cory and team are focused on pushing the limits of HTML5 for games and just rele
ased JSGameBench on GitHub. JSGameBench helps us track the performance of browse
rs as we build out next-generation HTML5 platforms and experiences at Facebook.
If you are interested in the promise of HTML5 and the engineering challenges lef
t to be tackled check out Speedy Sprites.
For those of you that missed the talk, you can enjoy it below.

Application Roles and Security Features

Donnerstag, 27. Januar um 23:30
Published by Harshdeep Singh
Yesterday we announced new security features to protect users’ accounts, and today
we’re releasing security features for Platform applications.
As companies building on Platform grow, they develop the need to give people dif
ferent levels of access, depending on individuals roles. Based on feedback from
developers, we’re introducing the following application roles:
• Administrator - complete access to the application and all its settings
• Developer - can modify all technical settings and access Insights but cannot res
et secret key, delete application, or add additional users
• Tester - can test the application in sandbox mode but cannot modify the applicat
ion
• Insights User - can access Insights but cannot modify the application
With this update, all users currently listed as a developer will be granted admi
nistrator access to your applications. We recommend that you update your roles a
ppropriately.
In addition, we are introducing new ways to monitor and control changes to your
application. To help businesses track changes, administrators can now specify an
email address to receive notifications when their application s settings are mo
dified. We’ve also introduced an advanced security feature, which lets administrat
ors require that changes are made from specific IP addresses.
More detailed information about these security features is available in our deve
loper documentation. We hope these improvements make it easier to manage and con
trol access to your applications. Again, don’t forget to visit the Developer App t
o update the user roles and security settings for your applications.
Harsh is an engineer in the Platform Infrastructure team.

Platform Updates: Improved Dev Site, Documentation, and More

Samstag, 29. Januar um 03:40
Published by Cat Lee
Operation Developer Love
We’re continuing to gather and address the feedback you’ve provided about your exper
iences building on Facebook Platform. Thank you for your help filing bugs, your
participation in the Forum, and your feedback in the comments below. This week w
e implemented two of your most requested features: a version of our Request Dial
og which eliminates the need for server FBML to send requests and new Applicatio
n roles and security features to help you manage and control access to your apps
. We also hosted a HTML5 Tech Talk at our offices, which was attended by more th
an 200 developers and live streamed to nearly a thousand others.
Dev Site Documentation and Navigation
We launched improved documentation and a new navigation on the Dev Site to help
you quickly find the resources you need.
• Documentation. We’ve reorganized our docs into four sections that you can view in
the left menu: Getting Started, Core Concepts, Advanced Topics, and SDKs & Tools
. By combining our overview material with reference docs, we hope it’s easier to f
ind all the information about a single API in one place. Under Getting Started,
you’ll find sample apps and updated Getting Started Guides for mobile, Apps on Fac
ebook, and Websites. Based on your feedback, we’ve also simplified documentation t
o help you better understand important concepts like authentication and how to u
se our social channels to engage users and let them share content with friends.
• Platform updates. We’ve often heard that it’s hard to keep track of changes on Plat
orm. To help you stay up-to-date on Platform news, health, changes, roadmap, and
community events, we’ve added convenient links to these topics in one place.
• My Apps. We wanted to make it easier to access the Facebook Developer App and yo
ur applications, so we added a link to the top menu.
We hope the simplified design of the Dev Site will make it easier for you to sta
y connected with the dev community, track changes and improvements, and build aw
esome social experiences.
Final Reminder: January 31 Deprecations
As previously announced, the following features will no longer be available afte
r January 31st:
• Infrequently used REST API methods
• <fb:editor>, <fb:wall> and <fb:feed> functionality
• Data Store API
• Old Insights for Pages and Applications
In addition, we are requiring all developers implement the technical solution to
address the use of UIDs of Facebook Platform outlined in November.
Please review the Platform roadmap for additional details.
HTML5 Tech Talk
HTML5 continues to be important for us and we hope you’ll join us in moving the te
chnology forward. If you missed the event, you can view it here.
Fixing Bugs
Bugzilla activity for the past 7 days:
• 112 new bugs were reported
• 28 bugs were reproducible and accepted (after duplicates removed)
• 7 bugs were fixed (7 previously reported bugs and 0 new bugs)
• As of today, there are 4,485 open bugs in Bugzilla
Forum Activity
Developer Forum activity for the past 7 days:
• 369 New Topics Created
• 221 New Topics Received at least 1 reply
• Of those 221, 100 were replied to by an Admin
• Of those 221, 92 were replied to by a Moderator

Calling All Entrepreneurs - Come Hack with Us!

Heute, 31. Januar um 12:00
Published by Douglas Purdy
This morning, the White House introduced the Startup America Partnership to brin
g people across public and private industries together to foster entrepreneurshi
p. As a company with strong entrepreneurial roots, we’re pleased to be involved wi
th this project to provide the resources and technologies needed for entrepreneu
rs to create the next great companies.
As part of our commitment, we plan to host 12 Startup Days in 2011 to provide ea
rly-stage companies with engineering and design support on the Facebook Platform
. Startup Days are monthly events for entrepreneurs to work and hack with us to
build new apps and websites that incorporate the latest social technologies.
In addition, we plan to stay active within open source communities and are proud
of what we ve contributed in the past. Open source technologies continue to be
important to startups that are scaling and growing quickly. They allow entrepren
eurs to spend more time working on their products.
Over the past few years we ve been contributing to a wide range of existing proj
ects, from PHP to memcached to Varnish and many others. We also open source our
own projects, ranging from major pieces of infrastructure (most recently HipHop
for PHP) to small tools that make developing all sorts of software faster and ea
sier (such as XHP and Three20).
These initiatives build on past programs such as the 170 Developer Garages hoste
d around the world, fbFund (a $10 million fund created in partnership with Found
er’s Fund and Accel Partners to invest in talented entrepreneurs and developers),
and recently announced initiatives such as Kleiner Perkin’s sFund and our involvem
ent with organizations like Y Combinator.
Companies like Zynga, Playfish and Playdom in three years have shown what’s possib
le in social gaming on Facebook Platform. They’ve created a new industry through d
eveloping fun and meaningful experiences for the 200 million people who actively
play their games with friends on Facebook. We’re starting to see the same thing h
appen in areas like commerce, news, music, and entertainment, and encourage star
tups to pursue building products that give people new ways to connect with their
friends in these industries.
We’ve bet big on startups, especially those who build social into their products f
rom the ground up. We look forward to seeing many of you join us and the other c
ompanies working with the Startup America Partnership. Stay tuned for details on
the next Startup Day.

Recent News
The Next Step for Facebook Credits
24. Januar 2011
New updates and best practices for implementing Registration
25. Januar 2011
Building More Secure Applications for Users
26. Januar 2011
Faster, Simpler Requests
26. Januar 2011
HTML5 Games 0.1
26. Januar 2011
Application Roles and Security Features
27. Januar 2011
Platform Updates: Improved Dev Site, Documentation, and More
28. Januar 2011
Calling All Entrepreneurs - Come Hack with Us!
31. Januar 2011

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