Showing posts with label fbml. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fbml. Show all posts

Facebook Application Development (Programmer to Programmer) Review

Facebook Application Development (Programmer to Programmer)
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Facebook Application Development (Programmer to Programmer) ReviewI'm relatively new to Facebook development, and not nearly as fluent with PHP as I'm sure many of the folks considering this book must be. So, you should probably read this review with that in mind.
I bought this and FBML Essentials at the same time, hoping that the two together would provide a sufficient understanding of the api and mark-up language. This book, as described by the other reviewers, has many typographical errors, which of course can be a nightmare if you're relatively low on the learning curve (as I am/was). If you choose to buy this book, you should most certainly download the source code from the wrox site to accompany your reading (as it seems it to be error free and because the code snippets in the book often leave critical methods and files out.)
The greatest shortcoming of this book is its lack of applied examples... many of the more advanced features in later chapters are listed in almost dictionary-style format, with no illustration or example code to explain how the methods and such are actually written and how they might be applied. Again, if you're well acquainted with php, you may be less in the dark than I and thus able to conceptualize how everything fits together. This is definitely NOT a book for novices (I found the O'Reilly book, although short, to be a more effective introduction to development via FBML in this respect (though it doesn't touch much upon the api and other more sophisticated techniques broached in this text.)
That said, the fact that there is such scant information available for Facebook development make this book worth your consideration; but I would definitely consider supplementing it with a book like O'Reilly's, and couple it with a pretty thorough acquaintance with the developer's wiki on Facebook. Even downloading and stepping line-by-line through the footprints application from Facebook will help you get the sense of how this stuff works.
Also be forewarned that this, and most of the books presently available, are not written for the new Facebook API written this summer (2008)... so methods like require_add() are no longer recognized and throw errors... this of course can be quite confusing if you're new to all of this.
Using this book, the wiki, and O'Reilly text, I was able to make my first Facebook App that lets users feature a particular video pertaining to a charitable cause from a small library in their profile boxes and application tabs. If you're trying to do something basic like that, you should be able to do so with these resources. Good luck!Facebook Application Development (Programmer to Programmer) Overview
The wildly popular Facebook social networking platform has published an open Application Programming Interface (API) and developers are eating it up--60,000 signed up to use it in the first few days; with this API, any programmer can create applications and new features for Facebook
Explores and explains the components available to programmers, including working with Facebook Markup Language (FBML), querying Facebook with FQL, application layout and flow, advanced configuration and performance tuning, and more
Businesses such as NBC, Yahoo!, Red Bull, Forbes, and the Washington Post are building branded applications to reach the growing Facebook community


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FBML Essentials: Facebook Markup Language Fundamentals Review

FBML Essentials: Facebook Markup Language Fundamentals
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FBML Essentials: Facebook Markup Language Fundamentals ReviewI purchased this book after reading a review calling this book "Totally obsolete". That reviewer has lost credibility with me, but I will admit there are portions in the book that restrict it to a period of time in the past (I feel authors should avoid referencing the future with expectation, unless they are planning a revised edition to follow those dates). This may be what the one reviewer focused on while ignoring the real context of the book. There is also a major resource link referenced I found not working, but these types of things are beyond an author's control (unless they are controlling that domain... hmmm...).
Anyway, except for a few things that date the content of this book I found it to be a solid addition to my reference library and as I begin to develop Facebook Applications it will be one of my resources to help me determine the best development route (FBML vs API).
I do appreciate the author's interests in reviews of his book and in truth it was his statements (not solely the negative review) that encouraged me to purchase the book for a closer look.
To quote Rodney Rumford; "Jesse has given you the direction to properly use FMBL with this great book. Use it often and it will save you hours of frustration." I have to agree.
FBML Essentials: Facebook Markup Language Fundamentals Overview
Do you have an idea for a Facebook application? With FBML Essentials, you'll learn how to build it quickly using the Facebook Markup Language (FBML) and other easy-to-use tools in the site's framework. If you can develop a website with HTML, writing a Facebook application with the help of this book will be a breeze. Of course, Facebook is not just another website. Any applications you write for it will have a potential audience of 16 million dedicated users. It's not just another social networking site, either. Under the surface, Facebook is pretty sophisticated, with a development toolkit that includes it's own modified version of HTML -- FBML -- to customize the look and feel of your Facebook applications. With FBML Essentials, you not only learn how to get started with this toolkit, you also get a complete reference on every FBML tag Facebook has ever written, with examples of how each tag works and advice on the best ways to use these tags in your code. This book includes:

A walkthrough of a sample Facebook application
Design rules for using images, CSS, JavaScript, and forms
Specific chapters on tags -- authorization tags, logic tags, user/group tags, profile-specific tags, and more
Messaging and alerts using FBML
Creating forms with FBML
Facebook navigation
Notifications and requests
Dynamic FBML attributes, including MockAJAX
How to test your FBML code
A chapter on FBJS, Facebook's version of JavaScript

If you want to try your hand at writing a Facebook application, you have a willing audience, an easy-to-use toolkit, and the perfect guide to get you started. FBML Essentials will help you take your idea from conception to working application in no time.


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