Maybe this is a stupid question and I did not understand exactly how Facebook applications work but here it goes
I want to implement a small e-shop as a Facebook application and for the products to have like button. The application will be instaled on a business page.
The problem is that the link for the like post on the wall will be to the actual eshop not to the facebook application on the business page.(or is it possible to make it to the application (eg. when you click the browser goes to the business page, selects the eshop tab, opens the product)?)
So actually I need to make a eshop site with 2 templates one for outside view and one for IFrame facebook view.
Is it possible to detect (from code-behind not in javascript) If the request is from the iframe or directly from outside?
Or the solution is more simple.. create a small version of the shop for browsing products only to be viewed in facebook and a full shop for outside view and the only relation between them is that when you click the like post from the first one you go to the second one?
I think I have found a solution...
I have created 2 domains that point to the eshop
shop.domainname & facebook.shop.domainname.
And in code behind I can check the Request.Url.Host if it starts with facebook.
For the facebook app the canvas url will be with facebook.shop.domainname and the links from the like button will be for the shop.domainname.
In this way I should be able to use 2 templates for the site and detect witch one I shoul use....
Related
I will try to explain a bit the context for my problem.
Context:
A while ago I started working on Facebook application. One of the requirements is to be included in a Facebook page as a tab. This application will contain on a page a send button in order to be able to make it more engaging with specific people, users of the application would choose on their own. The reason behind this is because the Facebook page containing the application is related to alcohol, and "liking" the application will get more audition and potential children. Another reason for using send button rather then other similar options from Facebook (like send dialog etc.) is because in Facebook documentation was stated that send button works on mobile devices and other options don't.
Problem:
My problem is related to the send button. What I need is to be able to completely configure the send button: url, image, title, description. I have research the open graph tags in order to be able to do this. Everything works fine if the page I want to be sent with the message is a website OUTSIDE Facebook. Once I started to use the url of a Facebook page (let's call it www.facebook.com/mycustompage), then the crawler takes the images, title, description from facebook.com ignoring the actual page and the produced message is not what I want.
I have searched a lot to better understand this limitation and could not find anything relevant.
The only article I could find as a potential solution was (and even this I had trouble finding):
Send button returning error codes, like button works fine
The above discussion is a workaround which I have already put in place but is not 100% what I want. The described workaround is about putting in the send button:
<div class="fb-send" data-href="http://www.mycustomdomain.com/og"></div>
a page that sniffs the user agent. In case the user agent is Facebook crawler to serve an html empty page just with the open graph tags, otherwise redirect to the desired URL - which in our case is the facebook page www.facebook.com/mycustompage.
The message produced contains:
the title which is a link to www.mycustomdomain.com/og which when
clicked opens a page in a new tab with the address
www.facebook.com/mycustompage - this is relatively ok
under the title I have a "sub-title" readonly text containing the domain of the link: www.mycustomdomain.com - THIS IS NOT OK since I don't want to share where I have hosted the application.
the image and the desired description - this is ok.
Conclusion:
What I want to know if there is a better way to do this rather than this workaround.
If not I would like to know how I can hide for the produced message the "sub-title" so that the hosted domain is not visible.
I have an application running in an iFrame that is embedded in a SharePoint site. The problem with this is navigation within the application does not result in a change in the SharePoint site URL. Therefore, if you were to refresh the overall page, you would be sent back to the default page of the application, not stay on the same page of the application. The reason this is an issue is sharing for social media. I have added a Facebook Share button to the application, but when it pulls the URL of the application which does not match or reference the URL of the overall site, so it just shares the application (which is not visually appealing and does not allow you to access the rest of the site).
Any body have any suggestions or know a place I can go for help? Thanks!
If I understand properly, the Facebook stuff is INSIDE the iframe?
If so, you can:
* Remove the iframe and integrate the application better with SharePoint, or
* Change the application so that it detects that it's running "alone" (with javascript etc), and if so redirect to the "big" application.
IF the Facebook stuff is in SharePoint, OUTSIDE of the iframe, you can write some javascript to update the URL in some way that matches the URL of the application. This requires that the SharePoint parent application and the iframe application run in the same domain - if they are not, this is not an option.
Note that changing the "parent" URL with JS will reload the page, UNLESS you only change the URL after the "#" part (so you can do something like:
"http://sharepoint/iframe.aspx?aa=11&bb=22#iframeUrl=http://uglyapplication/"
You'll also probably want to write JS to update your iframe accordingly if the user press "back"/"forward" etc in the browser, because changing the URL like above will still add a "step" to the browser history.
Whats the best way to develop a tab on facebook in a facebook page with content inside it? Would it just be html within that tab?
Easiest way is to install a 3rd party iframe App on your Facebook Page. You can find these Apps by searching for "iframe" in Facebook's search. Once you have one of these Apps installed, you can customize the HTML/CSS/JS of the iframe, which will then be reflected on you Page Tab. Alternatively, you could create your own Facebook App and install it as an iframe in your Facebook Page. This will achieve the same thing, and may give you more control, but you will have to host the html/css/js files yourself and it will be more work.
I recently have the same need.
To just place a facebook tab containing just a static html with text and image.
Here are the steps. It can be quite a nightmare to review the documentation of Facebook since it is always in change.
In the home page, click in the settings button. There is a link "Create application". You have to be sure to be in the Facebook development section
In the Create Application home page. In the upper menu there is the button "Applications". Here will be listed all your applications. If this is the first time, again the button "Create a new app"
3.Enter the information requested. Name of the application, an identifier (I prefer the same display name without spaces) and choose a category.
As a security step, a captcha is shown. Just fill with the characters in the screen.
Since your tab is an html. You have to host this file in your own server in order to have a path. The first tricky thing here is to convert this file into a php, asp, or similar extension. since Facebook uses GET or POST protocol to send information. You have to ensure that your file understands this requests. So, your server must accept the corresponding programming language. Even if your tab doesn't have any real code.
The configuration of your app is shown in screen. In the left menu, the option "configuration" displays the options to activate your tab.
click "Add plattform" button and select Facebook tab
fill the information required with the corresponding URLs. Note: Facebook always requires secured URLs so make sure that your server or hosting service has the SSL certificate validated.
Upload the image of your tab to be shown in the home of your profile in your tab section.
ok, so far we are good. Now. This was a long search. There is no longer the "Add to my webpage" link anywhere. So use this link to access to that hidden link. here Basically you enter the facebook app id and the URL of the hosted file.
Then you select the facebook page where you want to link this tab. And that's it!
note: the alternative to the link is this: (https://www.facebook.com/dialog/pagetab?app_id=YOUR_APP_ID&next=YOUR_URL )
Hope this helps. It was a waste of time when I have to search for the details so I want to share this.
Okay so for this page:
http://www.facebook.com/ESPN?sk=app_224097940938597
Which appears on the left hand bar between ESPN Fanwhich and ESPN Live Chat.
That isn't a canvas but it isn't a static page that I can gather. I found this tutorial: http://www.kimwoodbridge.com/how-to-add-a-custom-tab-to-a-facebook-fan-page/
But that is creating static content.
What I'm wondering is how I can create a dynamic page within a tab?
To create a "dynamic" page within a tab is pretty easy. Install the Developer's App and create a new application. There are tons of posts all over google about creating new Facebook apps, so you should be able to find those pretty easily.
After you create a new application, you set up the Tab information for it under "Facebook Integration."
The way tabs work is they create an iFrame in the Facebook canvas that loads a page from your webserver. You can do whatever you want within that iframe to make a dynamic page. Also, since it's an iframe, you can have links that go all over the place and build a whole mini-site which works inside the Facebook canvas.
Basically, you do the same thing you would normally do to create a dynamic page/site, and set up a Facebook application that points to it. There are a few caveats to building Facebook applications, but they're hard to enumerate without specific scenarios. The biggest one (and it's well documented) is that the size of a tab is 520px wide, so whatever you build has to fit within that width. The length can be whatever you want, Facebook has APIs in place that let you automatically resize the iframe as needed.
Good luck, and welcome to Facebook programming. Prepare to rip your hair out, because everything changes every 4-6 weeks :x
I have successfully setup an iFrame based App using the Javascript SDK, and we are trying to enable it on a Page Tab.
It seems Facebook has changed some things lately, because the app breaks when added to the Page Tab. I even went as far as making sure that all external scripts were included in the main index.php file, and that the body tags were taken out.
No, I'm trying to find out if it is even possible to use methods such as the stream.publish within a Profile Tab at all.
It seems like it isn't. As far as I can tell, you can no longer use any social methods on the Profile Tab.
Here were two related articles on the subject:
insidefacebook.com/2010/08/19/facebook-moving-toward-iframes-over-fbml-for-canvas-apps-and-page-tabs/
-and-
developers.facebook.com/roadmap
If anyone can confirm or deny this, it would be a huge help. The Facebook docs are just all over the place.
Here's a link to the working App Canvas as it stands now: http://apps.facebook.com/votetesting/
I know that on tab pages, you cannot do any JS until the user clicks on something first. Maybe that is the problem.
-Roozbeh