I wrote a simple plugin to update Facebook and Twitter statuses when I published a new post in WordPress. Simply authenticating to Facebook took about 2 hours of work, following API links that no longer worked and linked to Bing searches, etc. Problem is, I always swear never to write code on Facebook anymore after one of these experiences, but the next month...
I’m done building Facebook apps for clients
21–30 of 77 posts
Re: I’m done building Facebook apps for clients
#22For Rails: Devise 1.1.2 + MiniFB (both on Rails3) works very well.
Re: I’m done building Facebook apps for clients
#23I couldn't agree more with this article (though I sadly can't say 'no' to Facebook development). I recently did a tiny amount of Facebook integration into a site and it was horrific.
All I wanted to do was add a `Like` button that would broadcast to the clicker's friends timeline. What could be simpler? Just copy and paste their code onto your page and you're done. Right?
The second sentence on their documentation page says "when the user clicks the Like button on your site, a story appears in the user's friends' News Feed with a link back to your website."
But it turns out that's not true. It turns out you have to jump through all kinds of hoops to get that behavior. The documentation for their simplest and most used integration feature couldn't go one paragraph without falsehood.
Re: I’m done building Facebook apps for clients
#24Facebook documentation SUCKS!
that's pretty much the tldr of the post. I've no idea why it's on the frontpage. I thought it was going to be some philosophical objection to the walled-garden approach, or some experience with facebook being anti-open web, or the way fb apps teach users bad habits or at least something of substance. but really it was just a rambling rant.
Re: I’m done building Facebook apps for clients
#25It seems like a cultural issue. We were at an event on Tuesday where they let us know about a host of API changes relating to apps specifically, but when I got back and emailed asking for some documentation (even anything internal), all I got was a "we'll get back to you." Ironically (or maybe not), part of the presentation was a slide featuring a workgroup with a "Done is better than perfect" poster. Well, yeah, but…
With docs, correct is better than done.
Re: I’m done building Facebook apps for clients
#26Facebook documentation SUCKS!
that's pretty much the tldr of the post. I've no idea why it's on the frontpage. I thought it was going to be some philosophical objection to the walled-garden approach, or some experience with facebook being anti-open web, or the way fb apps teach users bad habits or at least something of substance. but really it was just a rambling rant.
All of those would be interesting posts, but I don't really have a problem with them. I do have a problem with the way Facebook treats their developers, so that's what I wrote about. I'm sure the post could have been better, and I'd enjoy any specific suggestions you might have. Thanks!
Re: I’m done building Facebook apps for clients
#27This is Bret Taylor's Graph API - the concept simplified the API a lot, and companies like Freebase copied it for their own data. Too bad it is not working...
Explain, please?
Re: I’m done building Facebook apps for clients
#28Their iPhone Facebook Connect documentation is beyond atrocious. What little there is was written by someone who, besides not being a non-native English speaker, also does not care about getting things right. Several people have mentioned how bad the documentation is, but nobody has provided examples. In case anyone from Facebook (or "facebook" as it's sometimes called in the docs) reads this and cares, I'm putting s…
This is just spelling / grammar, I have no problems with these errors, especially when the main documentation is wiki-based (this may be because I'm not a native speaker). In my limited experience with Facebook docs before the Open Graph API, I haven't seen factual errors, but there are a lot of omissions.
Open Graph API seems very clean and it also seems like it doesn't need much documentation... if the API calls actually worked. I haven't used it and I don't plan to start using it given these reports (in the old API there were also quite a few things that break occasionally and take forever to be repaired).
Re: I’m done building Facebook apps for clients
#29I, and several people I know, have been in this situation before. Facebook seems to have very little commitment to backwards-compatibility and comprehensive documentation. On a more general note, I’d strongly recommend against building your entire business around a single platform.
> strongly recommend against building your entire business around a single platform
I see this statement a lot and I never understand it. If you're Zynga, should you build Farmville for OpenSocial and as an independent site too? The cost of doing this seems prohibitive.
Most businesses built on Facebook can be taken elsewhere if the cost of the Facebook platform starts to outweigh the benefits. Even Farmville can be ran independently, but consider how many users they'd lose in the transition and afterwards.
Re: I’m done building Facebook apps for clients
#30I recently ported my app back to the old Javascript API; I wish I could say that it was for the superior older documentation, but it was actually because the new API randomly stopped returning my calls from time to time. All of the big moneymakers' apps are built on the older stuff, so I figure when it breaks, it gets a bit more love. The documentation is still shoddy, the Bing-powered documentation search is abysmal…
More than once, when I searched the documentation, the top result was a link to the very search page I was on.
I just started noticing that about two weeks ago. What an monumental pile of failure those docs are.
Why they dumped the only hope they had -- the wiki -- I will never understand.