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Facebook is all the craze on the Internet but also for developers, at Lemon we get asked about our Facebookabilities on a weekly basis!
We have finally popped our cherry and developed several applications using both Face Book Markup Languages and Iframe techniques and found it interesting to say the least.
It was pretty easy to get started as I am already on Facebook, I just had to add the developer application and read the start up documentation, its easy to read and full of good tips, I literally created my set-up in 5 minutes downloaded Visual Studio elements and got started.
We eventually found out that both can be good depending on the type of app you build:
- FBML gets the Facebook look and feel right, it has great custom controls, makes it more intuitive for Facebook users and pages load faster as one does not need to constantly call the Facebook API.
However, as Facebook act as a proxy it only allows for 12 seconds timeouts, the user of cookies is restricted and JavaScript very difficult to use and debugging is tough.
- Using an Iframe gives you more control over development: cookies, JavaScript, debugging but limits your Iframes in dimensions and does not allow you to use the built in Facebook controls and generally affects the look and feel of your app.
We will be releasing our own ‘fun’ Lemon application very soon and keep you posted.
Martin, Senior Web Developer
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