

Warning to Facebook app developers:  mind reading skills required! - amichail

When you submit your app to Facebook's Product Directory, it may be rejected with a very vague reason such as this:<p>"Thanks for your submission of "&#60;appname&#62;" to the Facebook Platform's Product Directory.  We have reviewed your application, and unfortunately cannot yet add it to the directory because it is unfinished or under construction.  Please fix this problem and resubmit the application."<p>Now you get to have lots of fun trying to guess what this is all about.  In fact, looking through the Developers' group might give you some ideas. Maybe one day you might stumble upon the reason for the rejection.  Or maybe not.
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snorkel
This is by far not the only gotcha in Facebook apping.

The Applications Settings form is a magical mess of spagetti logic. The first
thing your learn is your can't even access the most useful applications
settings in the form unless you choose "other users can install this
application" ... then magically the form explodes with all the options you
really need to set ... wtf? ...and then the About text for your app is entered
in two different forms. Choosing developed by a company vs. developed by
individual causes different kind of linkage on the app About page.... The most
drunken delusional designer at Microsoft could not design a worse form than
this.

Another thing you learn on your own is Facebook does not tell you the end
user's ID unless the user installed your application. Their docs talk about
the login process but are silent on explaining the difference between login
vs. install which leads to this madness about "infinite sessions". All it
means is if the user installs your application == infinite session. If user
"logs into" your application == 24 hour session. Needless to say it is easier
if user installed your application, again not mentioned in the docs.

Oh and another thing, Facebook does not save application data for you. Saving
user settings and data is totally your problem to solve. It'd be nice if
Facebook had an API to stash just a little bit of data for each app user but
no dice.

...oh and finally try submitting your application to the product directory...
SORRY! Your application needs to have at least 5 users before it will be
listed!! How does an application that hasn't lanuched yet and isn't even
listed get 5 users??? Such are the mysteries of Facebook.

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edgeztv
Their form also asks for like 7 different URLs (canvas, ToS, unistall,
install, etc), while many FB apps don't care about all these URLs. It would be
nice if they had an option "use the same URL for everything", or, better yet,
made everything but the "canvas" URL optional.

~~~
sbraford
Trailing slashes (or forgetting them) can also lead to problems. Luckily the
guides are pretty explicit about telling you to specify them. (RoR at least)

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amichail
As an update on this, what you need to do is send a request for elaboration to
developers-help@facebook.com. I got detailed feedback by doing so.

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jsjenkins168
This type of stuff has to be expected when you're working in a walled garden,
which is what facebook platform is...

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bluishgreen
Facebook is reminding me more and more of Microsoft, it would be good for them
if they remind us of Google or something. [ microsoft = bad. google = ok.]

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amichail
One of the rumors mentioned in the Developer's group is that you need to
supply a post-remove url, presumably to delete all the user's data upon
uninstallation of your app. But is that even a good idea? What if the user
adds it again? Shouldn't the data be retained?

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willarson
It probably is a good idea to flag the account as inactive, and move it to
separate table to keep the primary table clean. AFAIK FaceBook won't know that
you're not removing the data completely, and this will allow you to restore
the user if they want to, but not bloat your app with outdated entries.

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bls
If I find your application useless then I don't want you to retain any
information about me.

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amichail
What if you accidentally uninstall my app and lose many hours of work?

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bls
I understand what you mean. But, who is going to be entering valuable,
unreproducible data into Facebook? If they re-install your app then they will
probably be pretty happy to enter everything all over again.

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amichail
BTW, the app in question is here:

<http://apps.facebook.com/studystickies>

Any hints on what might be wrong with it?

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sbraford
I dunno, possibly it could use more polish? (not my opinion, just theory on
what they might not like about it)

It'd be nice if the books on the main page all had thumbnails at least.

