New facebook application width to be 520px only? - facebook

I'm about to make a facebook application and I'm confused about what width I can design for. It seems that at the moment you have 760px at your disposal, but a lot of sources say this will be reduced to 520px in the beginning of 2010. Being halfway through 2010 already, I'm wondering if this is really happening? 520px seems very little? Does anyone know if and when the change will happen? What will happen to existing applications that are wider?

The 520px width is in reference the Application-Specific Tabs, not Applications proper.
Applications still use the full 760px width.

I've no idea what they intend, so take this with a pinch of salt. (Similarly, treat any assertions by non-Facebook staff with a heavy amount of cynicism - those crazy Zuckerbergites work in strange ways...)
Anyway, the last time they introduced a new width, they gave developers the option to stick with the old width system.
In fact, that option is still there (in the app settings):
Given that that option is still there, I'd cautiously suggest that:
They're not realistically planning another change any time soon.
If they do, they won't force it on developers
Hope this helps.

Related

Position fixed in mobile Safari

I have a problem regarding fixed positioning that works on desktop(as expected), but doesn't work in any of the responsive testing tools in which i tested.
The site in question is this one: http://www.claytoncheung.com/
The problem is with menu div, it is set to position:fixed. Please don't ask why it is not set to absolute, i will only say that it can only be set to position:fixed. The reason is the limitations of the CMS that i use, i lost two days on various jQuery solutions to insert the menu dynamicaly, but unfortunately due to limitations in CMS none of these solutions worked.
The problem is that it is a multi language site, and the menu is not an ordinary one, since it is a one page site, so i am left with position fixed.
I tested the site in these tools:
http://www.responsinator.com/
http://mattkersley.com/responsive/
http://iphonetester.com/ and many more, but in all of them the menu doesn't take fixed position relative to the viewport, but to the parent element.
Please if anyone would take a look at the site to see how it should be and then try some of these tools to see the problem, or even better to check live on iPhone, which unfortunately i can't do.
If anyone could close this question, the problem was with my media queries, not with position fixed. After two days it just came to mind this moment.

Facebook page tab iframe appears on bottom

It seems like there's a bug with the facebook page tabs. Lots of them are rendering content on the bottom of the page.
Is there a change that developers must be aware of?
It is in fact a bug. I've just spent an hour looking into it.
It appears that they have increased the width of the right pane and it has caused the content area to shrink to less than 520px.
Unfortunately, the iframe that Facebook uses to display app content is hardcoded with a 520px width and you are unable to modify it. Need to wait till Facebook pushes out an update.
Edit: Bug reported to facebook already. Details here
Indeed, this is FB wide on all pages. All of our iframe apps have this issue, including Coke, Chevy, etc. FB just finished a push minutes ago http://developers.facebook.com/live_status/ and I hope that they're fixing this right now!
Problem still persists. There is a bug listed on Facebook http://developers.facebook.com/bugs/298512163544012?browse=search_4f3c5c801a70d4639459595. I hope it gets prioritized.
yup Facebook have stuffed up
Someone needs to fire the dev who committed these changes without testing them.....
Well my apps shrink to fit any width. My apps can fit as small as 100 pixels w to 1000 pixels. Therefore its not a width issue. I'm just happy its nothing on my end I was freaking out for a second. Even restarted the computer (LOL) whew!!!

Google Adsense transparent background

How to make the Google Adsense block transparent?
It uses iframe, and resides on other domain, so jQuery can't do anything. I tried to target it with css, but that's also impossible. Any ideas?
I'm not trying to game adsense system, simply I've a background image, and with solid fill the ad looks disgusting.
I think some other people have answered correctly that you can't really do this. But what really is the root problem here? You are trying to avoid the ad looking bad on a background image.
simply I've a background image, and with solid fill ad looks disgusting!
Well, why not add some sort of effect that is strictly on your page but makes the ad simply look better. I'm thinking the easiest way to do this is with a box shadow: http://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/css-box-shadow/
Here are some examples of what such an effect might look like:
http://jsfiddle.net/7wPrS/3/
http://jsfiddle.net/7wPrS/4/
This is a famous question asked in years. The answer is " YOU CANNOT "
(at least for normal account)
Why? Because if can, then so easy to cheap and trick people to click
While you may not be attempting to game the system, many, many others have. As a result, Google uses an iframe to strictly limit what you can modify - they can't possibly do this on a case-by-case basis, so quite frankly Google should not allow this. You cannot set a transparent background, only a solid color of your choosing.

iPhone SDK: Ideas on how to implement a help facility for application

We we wondering what are some ways developers have added a help function to their apps. What are some techniques people have used?
One way we were thinking of is to us UIWebView to display a HTML file with help instructions.
Thoughts appreciated.
I'm using UIWebView right now which pretty much contains all the help in a single page, along with some JQuery things to display popups, etc. But I like the way iCab Mobile (et al.) are doing things which is a sectioned UITableView with each row a separate topic or section within their overall help information (complete with icons...) then in their bundle they have each section in its own html file, organized by localization.
Another thing in my queue for the next release is to provide a dynamic "News" view. The rough idea is as follows... I have on my server a file or CGI where I can place small bits of news I'd like to push out to users. On startup, my app checks for network availability and if present, start a thread to see if anything has changed on the server since last updating the News data. If changes present, post an alert letting user know, and asking if they'd like to read it now. At that point, the latest news is already downloaded and cached, so they can simply read it later if they want, and I won't post anymore alerts until the server file changes again. (And one could add a preference/setting to disable these alerts.)
I'm thinking this would be a good way to let people know that some nasty bug is known and fixed and an update is sitting in the queue, solicit beta testers, promote upcoming features or other apps, etc. I can see where constant alerts everytime I've got something new to promote would get annoying, so having a setting to disable them means the user never has to read them unless they want to. Although some kind of override to warn of recently discovered/fixed bugs seems sensible.
FWIW, the author of Mover+/Mover has just started doing a similar thing, though I think Emanuele is perhaps only showing one Notelet at a time, whereas I envision a bit more of a history (shown in UIWebView) until I decide to age stuff off the bottom of the stack.
I'm using a scroll/page view to show several images containing small notes. Each image then tells the user about the more advanced functions on a specific part of the app.
In my opinion the help should only contain information that isn't a 100% relevant for the use of the application. It should be things the advanced user should use to make more use of the app. It should contain gold for the power users. The "basics" should be so obvious that no help would ever be needed. If that's not the case, I think, you've failed as a developer on the iPhone platform.
(Here's a screen shot from my demo app)
I'm currently creating a fairly complicated app. I'm thinking of doing help as a semi-transparent overlay - help in text form is hard to swallow for users; it's much more helpful to just point at stuff and say "this does that".

MySource Matrix - Opinions

Has anyone had experience with MySource Matrix as a content management system? If so, thoughts/opinions/comments?
Thanks in advance.
Absolutely excellent. It takes little while to get used to how it does things with its asset structure, but it is really flexible and powerful. Simple edit interfaces are great too.
Make sure you give it enough hardware. If you want dynamic content without caching you need heaps of grunt to make it hum.
Hands down the best CMS I have ever used. We use it on the Pacific Union College website, as well as many side projects. I am still amazed at all it has to offer compared to other products that are not free.
Give it a good look, and take some time to get past the learning curve, but once you do, it will be more than worth it. :)
I've recently been trying to use it in an organization where many non power users are generating content. - it has many interface bugs and odd behavior, so that many simple tasks (i.e. loading images) often have to be done by an power user (i.e. me).
When you are editing the HTML of page content white space is not preserved. If you where to format the HTML in the WYSIWYG editor, save you changes, and then come back the whitespace you've added will be removed - actually when you switch the WYSIWYG editor into HTML mode it doesn't show you the exact HTML, and does some silly things - like pressing enter inserts non breaking spaces - but doesn't show them until you save and re-enter HTML mode.
it is a number of little details like this which make it generally frustrating to use and disliked by everyone here.