At some point over the past couple hours, Facebook quietly disabled their toolbar which previously used an iFrame to display all destination sites that were linked to from within Facebook. Previously all links from within Facebook resulted in a toolbar which had commenting and like features that users could interact with once they arrived to the destination site. The service was first announced last December but had been causing some issues for a few people.
Our site actually had an issue in which users would have the page constantly refresh everytime a page was loaded. While we’re not sure if this is the reason for external links no longer having the toolbar, I’ve reached out to Facebook to get some form of clarification. The feature was pretty useful, however we could understand if there were technical issues taking place.
For now we aren’t quite sure why they decided to turn this off or if this is a temporary glitch. We’re currently waiting on a response from Facebook and will update the post as soon as we hear back.
Update
Facebook has followed up with us and has confirmed that the toolbar has been removed permanently.
Update 2
Apparently this feature has been gone for at least a month but this is the first time we noticed it. A Twitter user pointed to this one month ago.
![[Inside Social Apps 2012]](http://www.allfacebook.com/wordpress/wp-content/themes/allfacebook2/images/ISA2012_336x100_F_RegisterNow.gif)
![[AllFacebook Stats: Facebook Analytics for Your Business]](http://www.allfacebook.com/wordpress/wp-content/themes/allfacebook2/images/stpro_allfacebookstats.gif)
![[How can Facebook change your business?]](http://www.allfacebook.com/wordpress/wp-content/themes/allfacebook2/images/FMB_A_MAY2011_336x100_F.gif)
Perhaps this will be compensated by an enchancement/drive for Fb Connect?
Comment by Rado T. Stoyanov — October 2, 2009 @ 1:06 pm
isnt the legal issue the problem? I heard it is in some countries treat as "steaing the content"
Comment by Jernej — October 2, 2009 @ 1:19 pm
Huh, is that what it was there for? I thought it was just a stupid frame like About.com likes to stick on everything and the first thing I'd do on arriving at a link was to close it.
Comment by R.M. Koske — October 2, 2009 @ 1:55 pm
i think the refresh issue was a conflict w/the fb connect on this site.
Comment by Brian Breslin — October 2, 2009 @ 4:58 pm
This is kind of interesting. I have been using FB regualy for months now and have never seen that toolbar. I can say for sure that if I had seen that toolbar I would have walked away from FB.
I HATE THOSE DAM TOOLBARS! They are to dam distracting.
Comment by B. Moore — October 2, 2009 @ 9:32 pm
That’s a shame. I actually really like that tool bar… when it worked correctly anyway. I thought it was rather unwise of sites like the new york times to jump out of it. It prevented me from commenting on their content, and increasing it’s interest among my friends.
Comment by Eric Godfrey — October 5, 2009 @ 12:44 am
That’s a shame. I actually really like that tool bar… when it worked correctly anyway. I thought it was rather unwise of sites like the new york times to jump out of it. It prevented me from commenting on their content, and increasing it’s interest among my friends.
Comment by CT — October 5, 2009 @ 8:27 am