With more than 250,000,000 active users, Facebook is the world's #1 social networking platform. But developing successful Facebook applications presents unique challenges, both technical and nontechnical. Now, two of the world's most experienced Facebook developers show you exactly how to meet those challenges. Essential Facebook Development offers insider guidance and up-to-the-minute best practices for the entire application lifecycle: design, coding, testing, distribution, post-launch monitoring, and metrics-even application marketing. Using extensive real-world examples, John Maver and Cappy Popp reveal why some Facebook applications succeed brilliantly while others fail. Next, they walk through using every major component of the Facebook platform to build a complete application that has already proven successful in the marketplace. Maver and Popp thoroughly cover Facebook's most important new features, including Profile and Facebook Connect. They also provide extensive information available in no other book-from advanced application tuning guidance to adapting Facebook apps for the hot new Bebo platform. Whether you're developing your first social networking application or you've been doing it for years, Essential Facebook Development will help you get better results-every step of the way. Coverage includes
- Thorough, up-to-the-minute introductions to Facebook's current architecture, integration points, and development technologies
- Successful Facebook applications-and what makes them successful
- What every developer must know about Facebook's Terms of Use
- Creating effective Facebook application infrastructure, one step at a time
- Adding support for profiles, canvas pages, and messaging
- Incorporating JavaScript in your Facebook applications with FBJS
- Integrating Facebook into external sites with Facebook Connect and Facebook JavaScript Library
- Efficiently debugging Facebook applications
- Spreading, monitoring, and tuning applications after they're in production
