Platform Updates: Operation Developer Love

By Jeff Bowen - Wednesday, May 30, 2012 at 4:00pm

Since last Wednesday's update, we spotlighted Bingo Bash and launched the ability for people to play games in News Feed.

Testing FQL in the Graph API Explorer

Today we added an "FQL Query" tab to the Graph API Explorer to make it easier to test and play with FQL. As before, you can run FQL queries through the Graph API by issuing an HTTP GET request to https://graph.facebook.com/fql?q=QUERY where QUERY can be a single FQL query or a JSON-encoded dictionary of queries. This tab in the Graph API Explorer just gives you a quick way to experiment with queries.

Updated Open Graph Publishing Guidelines

To give people on Facebook the best experience, we’re introducing several new Open Graph publishing guidelines. In instances where these changes require you to modify an existing app, you’ll have 90 days to complete your update per our Breaking Change policy. These guidelines address feedback we’ve received and codify best practices that encourage everyone working with our platform to put user experience first.

Additional publishing guideline

For stories about watching a video or reading an article, you must use the built-in watch and read actions. We’ll no longer approve custom actions for these stories.

90-day update window

Even if we’ve approved your custom action for reading an article or watching a video, you must migrate to using a built-in action, resubmit your app and get approved. Please review the requirements for working with read and watch actions.
Built-in watch and read actions can only be published after someone engages with the content for 10 or more seconds. If a video is shorter than 10 seconds, the viewer must watch the entire video.
Tagging people and places:

Only encourage people to tag friends when they have actually performed an action together.

Only encourage people to tag a location if they are currently at that place.

Best practice: user controls for sharing

You should allow people to turn sharing on or off for the content in your app, and the setting a user selects should persist. Learn more about our policies and guidelines:

Next week's breaking changes

On June 6th, the following changes will go into effect. For more information, check out the Developer Roadmap.

Removal of FBML
FBML apps will no longer work on Platform. The "FBML Removal" migration will appear and will be enabled for all apps. It will be possible to disable the migration, thereby re-enabling FBML, until July 5, 2012 when the migration and all FBML endpoints will be removed completely.

XMPP Connections must be done over TLS
Apps connecting to Facebook's XMPP service will be required to use STARTTLS for all connections. We will start rejecting unencrypted connections.

Bugs activity between Tuesday, May 22 and Tuesday, May 29

150 bugs were reported
33 bugs were reproducible and accepted (after duplicates removed)
5 bugs were by design
18 bugs were fixed
29 bugs were duplicate, invalid, or need more information

Bugs fixed between Tuesday, May 22 and Tuesday, May 29

Activity on facebook.stackoverflow.com between Tuesday, May 22 and Tuesday, May 29

454 questions asked
402 questions with a score of 0 or greater
177 answered, 44% answered rate
261 replied, 65% reply rate