Hi everyone, Well I just decided to delve into learning a few technologies I've been wanting that have been on my to-do list: 1) Developing a facebook application, and 2) Doing something real with PHP Well, to do this I developed a fun little facebook application called TIm's Games! The URL is: http://apps.facebook.com/timsgames Basically its a flash game portal site accessed through facebook, and allows you to compete against your friends and such. I've used mochiads to get the games, and for the scoring gateway bridge to allow me to push scores back into my own mysql DB. With that I was able to create a "challenge your friends" feature, as well as notify old high score holders when a new person takes the top score for a game. You'll need a facebook account to access the site. I'd appreciate any feedback you have about the site, what I can do to make it better, more fun, etc. I've spent only about a week on it so far, and have many more ideas I want to implement, but this has been a fun ride and I've learned a lot so far! Its been a great "no-pressure" way to learn something new with a completely frivolous project. Thanks! Tim
Whoa, How'd ya do that? I wanted to make a Facebook App, but I have no clue how, I know HTML, CSS and som PHP but whati s FBmL? I just used an iFrame with the src of my website
FBML is facebook markup language. It is special tags, like HTML, that can render facebook specific data such as the userid, pictures, etc. I found using FBML and the canvases to work much better than the iframe apps. To do this, I really just started off slow. I first registered for an application key at http://www.facebook.com/developers/ Then download the PHP client library at the bottom of your application page. I then setup the demo "footprints" application that comes with the client. It works pretty well, but this was key for me seeing how the internals of a facebook app actually work. Once you figure some of those things out the rest is easy if you're already proficient with PHP, mysql, and other web development technologies. The facebook developer wiki has been an invaluable site for me: http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Main_Page I did have to learn and read quite a bit. I spent an entire day (about 8 hours or so) just reading through the facebook apps wiki, and setting up the footprints demo app just to get my bearings. Once I did that the rest was a cakewalk.
Awesome app Tim How much are you going to sell it for ? ... or what is the price for just the bare app ?
Looks great and only took a week. As for programming for Facebook, I found it very easy. Much easier than opensocial and MySpace. If you can program in php or some other web language you should have no problem picking it up in a few hours. You basically just program in php or whatever and add the odd fbml tag here and there.
Your application looks great. I've just started experimenting with Facebook applications myself. I'm no coder, so I need to work with what I can find around the web. I've been looking for info about adding a "challenge your friends" feature to my applications, but can't seem to find it. I was wondering if you could help me out