How to write a FaceBook app??

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Creating FaceBook application is pretty straight forward and it takes only minutes to built one. Before I proceed further let me share a piece of information with you. Do you know that the Facebook Apps Directory now contains more than 350,000+ Facebook applications for their 300+ million users. Isn’t that a staggering stat? Yes it is! What are you waiting for then. Lets see how we can increase the count of FaceBook application by spending few minutes.

If you are looking to embed presentations in your Facebook profile or want to share your favorite books and movies with friends or just want to spend time playing a word game with strangers, chances are that there already exists a Facebook app to solve your problem. However if you are feeling a little more adventurous and want to develop your own Facebook App that works the way you want and doesn’t carry any third-party branding or advertising, then you have an option to do that. And there are lot of material present in the web which can help you in making such an app.

Here I will just indicate steps to create some basic applications.

Facebook allows you to create applications that appear to the user in 2 different areas (primarily):

The profile: This is the ‘main user page’ in Facebook. It would be great to have your widget displayed here, but the big limitation is that applications that use Javascript are not allowed here (You must use FMBL, the facebook version of HTML). However you can display a small ad to take the user to the Canvas page and to the Javascript App.
The ‘Canvas page’: This is an entire page that your application gets to use (you can have multiple pages if you want). On these pages you can choose to display content from another website through an iframe.

So here are some of the basic steps that you need to perform for creating an application and get it posted in the canvas page:

Create your demo page: This is a page that the users will see on their canvas page. If you already have a page code with you then it is fine else you can follow the link. The link talks about an example application which you can use as reference. Save the file for the demo page somewhere in your website.
Login to FaceBook. In case you don’t have an account create one.
Install the Developer Application: This is what will allow you to create the application. Please go to the developers page to get it.
Create your application: Click on the “create application” link.
Fill in the details for your application:
1. Application Name: Any name you want. Check the Terms of Service checkbox.
2. Click ‘Optional Fields’.
3. Callback Url: This should be the root directory where the demo page is found stored. You must also add a ‘/’ at the end.
4. Canvas Page URL: This is the most confusing part. Enter a directory name for your applcaition. The name must be 7 characters or more, and must be unique from other Facebook applications. When you add ‘http://apps.facebook.com/’ to the front you have the Canvas page URL.
  NOTE: If you use upper case in the Canvas Page URL, it will be converted to lower case automatically. Also, case is important, so if you use upper case in your links later on they won’t work.
5. Tick ‘Use iframe’: This means that your canvas pages will use an iframe.
6. Application Type: Leave it at ‘website’.
7. Can your application be added on Facebook?: Tick ‘Yes’.
8. Application Description: Use any description that you like to add.
9. Default FMBL: This is the text that will go on the user’s profile.
10. Default Profile Box Column: Tick ‘Narrow’.
11. Side Nav URL:OK, here is where we put a link in the side navigation to the canvas page.
Add application: From within ‘My Applications’, click on ‘View About Page’ for your new application. Then click ‘Add Application’, and confirm this.

Now your application is ready. Click on the link either on the profile or on the navigation. And play on.

This was just a basic step wise instruction about creating application in FaceBook. However for getting detailed information you can visit the following sites:

Jump in!!