Why do some Facebook games manage to retain and monetize users, and others fail completely? The answer to this is complex, but often boils down to the game’s design.
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When Facebook opened up their “stream” to developers via the Open Stream API last year, they arguably added potential value for end users and are now trying to provide consistency of use in applications. The Facebook Developer Blog has a new post indicating a policy update on the devopment use of the Open Stream API that is intended to improve the experience for end users.
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The Drupal CMS (Content Management System) is a powerful choice for developing websites with online communities, amongst other features, so it’s an ideal target for a Facebook Connect option. Last year, AllFacebook reported on an FBConnect Drupal module developed by La Netscouade. A similar Drupal module, FConnect, is now available in Beta 4 by developer Vishal Sood.
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After ongoing rumors of a new version of PHP being released by Facebook today, the company has officially announced HipHop for PHP: a source code transformer. For those who suggested that it was a new compiler, it isn’t exactly that. And no, Facebook has not rewritten PHP all together. While I don’t understand much about the technicalities behind compilers, Haiping Zhao has posted complete details about the project.
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For some time now, a single developer at Facebook has been rebuilding PHP from the ground-up. It illustrates the quality of engineers that work at Facebook and this specific project is something that many Facebook employees are extremely proud of. Over the weekend, the SDTimes suggested that Facebook will officially announce their latest open-source project: a new PHP compiler (referenced off the record as “Hyper PHP” or “HPHP”).
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Today Adobe announced the launch of a new library that developers can take advantage of for integrating Facebook directly into their Flash applications. Previously, developers like Zynga and Playfish, were forced to developer their own libraries and workaround that made it possible for their popular gaming applications to integrate with the platform.
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Are you still trying to figure out how to publish news feed stories from your Facebook Connect enabled website? Last night Dave Morin published a tutorial for developers to learn how to enable this functionality in a 10 minute tutorial. I’ve been receiving daily requests from individuals having trouble with their Facebook Connect development so hopefully this tutorial will be of assistance.
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Last week I wrote about how Facebook’s policy for widget developers was a little too restrictive. The reason was that I was ultimately prevented from making it simple for site owners to quickly implement a Facebook version of MyBlogLog. I still believe that Facebook’s policy is overly restrictive and new practices will need to be developed for Facebook Connect to proliferate. Just take a look at some of the tweets below found when searching for “Facebook Connect” on Twitter and you’ll see a few reasons Facebook Connect doesn’t already have widespread adoption.

Fortunately for me I have 8 years of self-taught web development experience under my belt. It was my job for the most part until I launched this blog last May. That’s why when I saw Facebook Connect launch for the masses, I figured that it was about time to dive in and try out some code. As many other developers are experiencing, Facebook Connect isn’t easy to implement the first time around. Once you start playing with it though you quickly begin to understand what’s going on.
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For those of you that use Facebook application on a regular basis, Facebook has made a small adjustment to the way that the application menu works now. Rather than just viewing bookmarked application, you can also now view the recently used applications as Ray He explains on the developer blog. This change will provide more exposure for many of those application that users forget to bookmark.

When a user logs back into the site and can’t find the application they were looking for since they didn’t realize the bookmark feature or simply forgot to do so, now they can navigate directly there. It’s clear that Facebook is going through extensive user testing to determine where links and buttons should be place and making changes based on users’ experiences.
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If you are a web developer you are probably extremely familiar with the javascript lightbox, a pop-up box which displays images and html within the confines of an overlay box. Facebook took lightbox usage to a whole new level but they’ve done so with an extremely clean design. If you are obsessed with clean design and want to do so easily, you might want to take a look at Facebox.

The library requires jQuery to use it but that isn’t really a big hurdle to installing it. I’ve included a screenshot of this lightbox below. It’s a simple way to make a facebook-like lightbox so check out Facebox if you are interested!