On February 11 2011 Facebook has announced major upgrades to “Fan pages” by giving new layout with iframe support for fan page tabs. You can upgrade your pages from now or it will be upgraded automatically after March 10.FBML or iframe?
By enabling support for iframe in fan page tabs, Facebook in its developer blog has announced:
“With our recent launch of Requests and the support for iframe on Pages Tabs, we are now ready to move forward with our previously announced plans to deprecate FBML and FBJS as a primary technology for building apps on Facebook. On March 11, 2011, you will no longer be able to create new FBML apps and Pages will no longer be able to add the Static FBML app. While all existing apps on Pages using FBML or the Static FBML app will continue to work, we strongly recommend that these apps transition to iframes as soon as possible.”
For General Users
These are good announcements for developers, but not very good for general users, because according to the statement above Facebook has clearly mentioned that after March 10 users will not be able to add Static FBML application. This means as a general user you will not be able to customize your page with HTML, CSS or other useful FBML tags by using Static FBML application.
Hence for fan page customization you have to rely on third party applications which may or may not be free, and it may not be as flexible as Static FBML was. They also said that all existing apps will continue to work but with this they also recommend to switch from FBML to iframes as soon as possible.
So you have to be careful while buying Static FBML templates for fan pages. As we don't know how long they will continue to support old Static FBML tabs.
For Developers
This is good news for developers as you can easily switch to iframe and enable your application to be added to page tab, for this just go your application settings, under Facebook Integration, specify tab name and tab URL.
Note: To avoid horizontal scrolling your application must be within 520px for page tabs.
To add application user has to go to application's profile page.
Conclusion: Everyone on Facebook is not a developer, beacuse of which everyone will not be able to customize his page without using any third party application, which may not be free or as flexible as Static FBML was or both and also these applications may not be reliable as no one knows when they stop working due to server problem, or Facebook block them, or even application developer may remove his application from Facebook without any prior notice.
So be careful !
Terrific Post! I am really into social media right now (like everyone else out there!), especially Facebook fan pages, Facebook Marketing and FBML. It can be hard to keep up to date with such a fast changing innovative topic but I manage to do it through blog posts exactly like yours and bit.ly/hBxVuH. Tips and tricks rock. I am trying to learn as much as possible to put myself ahead of the curve. So thank you again!
ReplyDeleteEnjoy!
Aaron
Also, if you need a converter for FBML to iFrame, I found bit.ly/fAiICq which has a great converter.
Nice. Nice. Great post. I had no idea about iframes on facebook. I've been using fbml, but it's a hassle. I've got to check this out now.
ReplyDeleteIf you are having problem with auto-resize option, then change the IFrame Size to "Show scrollbars", if you want to stick to the first option then may be you have to add bit of javascript code to get it work.
ReplyDeleteRegarding your second question, the problem may be due to invalid tab url check your app settings.
buddy u r doing great .....
ReplyDeleteThanks a lot.
ReplyDelete