Posts Tagged Application Tabs
Facebook Static FBML & External Stylesheets – New Rules
Posted by timware in Social Media / Inbound Marketing, Static FBML & FBML on April 15th, 2010
UPDATE Apr 17 2010: It seems that external calls to CSS are working again, after some days of not working. It’s hard to know when Facebook has changed its API or just having a meltdown, particularly when they don’t issue a bug alert. Yes, there was a Facebook bug report 9601 specifically regarding canvas pages, but nothing that addressed Static FBML application tabs. I’m going to go exclusively with inlined CSS using the <style type=”text/css”> … </style> tags. They now work across all major browsers and platforms and just seem, well, safer.
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How to Embed Your YouTube Channel or Playlist in a Static FBML Page
Posted by timware in Social Media / Inbound Marketing, Static FBML & FBML, Web Coding on February 22nd, 2010
UPDATE: YouTube has changed the admin interface, and I have changed this post to reflect these changes.
In my earlier post on embedding Flash or YouTube videos on your Static FBML page, I described how Facebook’s Static FBML application supports the embedding of Flash objects, including YouTube videos.
NOTE: If you can’t get it working, make sure:
- The URLs to both the activation image (imgsrc) and the video channel are correct. You can test them by pasting the URL into your browsers address bar and accessing the image or video channel directly. If you can’t access them via this method, your URL is incorrect.
- You have closed the <fb:swf> tag, with </fb:swf>. If the tag isn’t closed, it won’t work.
- All quotes are closed. It doesn’t matter if they’re single (‘) or double (“), but they must match and they must be closed (width=’xxx’ or width=”xxx” – NOT width=’xxx or width=”xxx or width=”xxx’ ).
For businesses or organizations that have a YouTube channel, the good news is that you can embed a slideshow of your YouTube channel on a Static FBML application tab page. The presentation is quite nice, with the main video and, below it, a scrollable row of thumbnails that appears when the big video is moused over.
Here’s the drill:
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Facebook to limit app tab pages to 520 pixels – 240px less!
Posted by timware in Design, Social Media / Inbound Marketing, Static FBML & FBML on December 10th, 2009
Update: May 27, 2010:
A “Facebook spokesman” told Inside Facebook that the changes to Page tab widths “will likely happen in late July, but we’ll give Page administrators at least two weeks notice before making this change regardless of when it happens.”
Um, okay. Let’s see what happens….
Pre-May 27, 2010
This morning I read a very interesting post by Michael Lazerow of BuddyMedia.com about Facebook’s upcoming changes to Fan Pages.
There are a number of changes that will affect marketers who’ve been working Facebook, but for me, as a Web designer, the one that caused the most pain was Facebook’s intention of reducing the width of application pages from 760 pixels to 520 pixels.
The first thing I did was look for another authoritative source of this and, unfortunately, I found it on Facebook’s Developer site where, in stark red type, they state: “Important: In late 2009/early 2010, application tabs will be 520 pixels wide. For more information, please read the Developer Roadmap.” On the Developer Roadmap:
Application Tabs will be the only way to integrate applications into profiles and Pages. Application tabs will shrink from 760 pixels wide (today) to 520* pixels wide to accommodate a slightly revised design. Boxes, info sections, and the Boxes tab will be removed in the near future.
Now that’s a BIG difference and all the brands/businesses who’ve labored over creating custom pages using apps like Static FBML are going to have to rethink those pages, now that they have 240 fewer pixels to work with. Here’s what the maximum width will look like (example from a recent page we created, anticipating the reduction):
So I and a whole lot of Web designers have their work cut out for them, so to speak.
Of course, the question is, What happens to that 240 pixels of new real estate Facebook has available to use for itself? Is this a “land grab” by Facebook?
Other resources:
Static FBML Code Templates for Sale!
