Developer news
September 29, 2011
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Moving to a Modern Platform

When Platform launched in 2007, FBML was a key component for developers building on Facebook, with millions of apps successfully built using this technology. Over time, as Platform matured and embraced open standards, such as OAuth 2.0, HTML, and Javascript, the need for FBML has decreased. Last August, we announced our intent to move away from FBML. In March, we removed the ability to create new FBML apps. Today, we are announcing the FBML deprecation schedule:

  • January 1, 2012: FBML will no longer be supported. We will not fix FBML bugs after this date with the exception of security and privacy issues
  • June 1, 2012: FBML apps will no longer work on Facebook. All FBML endpoints will be removed.

We realize that some of you may still be relying on FBML for your apps. We want to make sure that you have all the resources you need for an easy and speedy migration. Over the past few months, we’ve been working with developers to understand the remaining use cases for FBML. Based on these conversations, we identified two primary use cases remaining: Requests and Static FBML tabs on Pages.

Requests

We have already announced the new and improved Request 2.0 which should make migrating from FBML Request much simpler. To upgrade to Requests 2.0, apps should send requests by using the Request Dialog. To learn more about Requests 2.0 and how to migrate from FBML Requests, see our documentation on Requests.

Static FBML

Custom tabs on Pages are an important aspect of Facebook Platform. Many developers and Page admins rely on Static FBML for hosting this content. With the deprecation of FBML, this content must be moved to an iFrame based solution. There are several free iFrame solutions available that allow easy migrate Static FBML content to HTML. The Preferred Developer Consultant Finder on Facebook is a great tool to find PDCs to help guide you through the upgrade process. In addition, we have worked with WildFire, one of these PDCs, to create a step by step tutorial to guide your migration. The tutorial is available here.

We are excited to move into a modern, standards based Platform. Please provide feedback and thoughts in the comments below.

Please Note: Our deprecation of FBML does not impact XFBML (eXtended Facebook Markup Language). XFBML is a set of XML elements that can be included in your HTML pages to display Social Plugins. When your page is loaded, any XFBML elements found in the document are processed by the JavaScript SDK, resulting in the appropriate plugin being rendered on your page. The JavaScript SDK will continue to support XFBML after the deprecation of FBML (save for the fb:serverFbml element which is used to execute FBML on our servers).