Facebook Application Development
Written by Clement Faria on November 20, 2009 under Web Development.
Product Description
The wildly popular Facebook social networking platform has published an open Application Programming Interface (API) and developers are eating it up–60,000 signed up to use it in the first few days; with this API, any programmer can create applications and new features for Facebook Explores and explains the components available to programmers, including working with Facebook Markup Language (FBML), querying Facebook with FQL, application layout and flow,… More >>
Facebook Application Development
Dustin Whittle
November 20, 2009 at 10:34 am
While there are minor typos in the text, I found this book covered everything I needed to know to build my facebook application. The text and examples are very detailed and the author’s style makes the book fun and easy to read. If you are getting started building facebook applications, than this book is for you.
Rating: 5 / 5
Bruce Gendler
November 20, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Agree with other reviewers regarding 1) annoying number of errors and the frustration that caused, and 2) the lack of added value in the dictionary style reference sections. What was most frustrating was the presumptive approach to much of the text. Explanations for many things go half way – because they assume the reader has some knowledge or mental starting point which is known to the author but has to be figured out by the reader.
Rating: 2 / 5
John Licato
November 20, 2009 at 1:27 pm
As already stated, there are lots of little errors, more than a few of them that should have been caught. It’s very clear that this book was written in a hurry, and it’s very much a reference book and not a very good how-to guide. You’re gonna need to know php, obviously you’ll need to know HTML, and it’s best that you are familiar with javascript and perhaps some AJAX will help as well. Even so, the book is disorganized in such a way that I’ve frequently come across things that I don’t remember him describing, so I’d look it up in the index and not find it there. So I’d end up having to use google to find examples and explanations, making me wonder why I bought this book in the first place.
Rating: 2 / 5
Jerry Saperstein
November 20, 2009 at 4:06 pm
The photo of author Nick Gerakines on the cover makes him appear very young. The words of the author, however, demonstrate his competence both as a programmer and a writer.
Gerakines’ writes in a spare, almost terse style. There is no fat in his words. If you know nothing about programming, you will quickly become lost.
Chapter 1 is a thorough an overview of “Facebook as a Platform” as anything I’ve seen in my heretofore limited experience. Gerakines’ direct style is effective in communicating information: “Facebook does not host the application, nor do the applications live on the Facebook network.’ Important knowledge stated clearly and plainly. This chapter reviews what an application is, how (in broad terms) it interfaces with Facebook and the user, reviews some popular applications and discusses why you might want to create a Facebook application.
Chpter 2 is a tutorial on building your first simple Facebook application: a gentle way to familiarity.
Chapters 3 through 7 explore the different methodologies that can be used to develop Facebook applications. It is a very rich programming environment. While I have no plans to write a Facebook app (I am just learning the architecture), I was surprised by how extensive and flexible the Facebook Platform is. It is easy to see why so many people are excited by the possibilities.
These chapters are quite detailed and, if you have at least some experience with PHP, XHTML or XML, SQL relatively easy to follow. However, the examples are short. It would have been better if there were more robust examples.
The remaining chapters cover Facebook’s developer resources, expanding the teaching application from Chapter 2, creating external applications, best practices and an appendix containing a PHP reference. The guts of the book are in Chapters 3 through 7.
Overall, this is a pretty well structured and written introduction to Facebook application development. It is somewhat more than a primer and far less than a thorough exposition of Facebook application development. Good for novice through very early intermediate Facebook application developers.
Jerry
Rating: 4 / 5
A. Andrews
November 20, 2009 at 6:35 pm
I found this book to be a barely acceptable reference, but only because the Facebook documentation is so bad. The book is full of annoying little errors in the text and sample code. For example, a section on FBML tags for navigation starting on page 51 promises a more complete discussion of the topic in chapter 10, which turns out to be about external application development.
Rating: 2 / 5