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Platform Updates: Operation Developer Love

September 19, 2012ByShireesh Asthana

Since last Wednesday's update, we published a Developer Spotlight on Cooliris, did a recap of [Facebook @ GDC Europe: Developer Day](https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/2012/09/14/facebook


gdc-europe--developer-day-recap/) and announced winners of HACK the Social Web.

Better Dialogs for Canvas and Page Tab Apps on Facebook

Platform dialogs are all built to run in a variety of display contexts on both the desktop and mobile web. As part of our continued efforts to make these dialogs work smoothly in all contexts, dialogs, such as Feed Dialog, Pay Dialog and Auth Dialog, will now open inline by default as a modal overlay for Canvas and Page Tab apps. These dialogs provide a better user experience than previous pop-up dialogs and do not require the user to turn off pop-up blockers. For more information, please see our documentation.

Debugging Access Tokens

When working with access tokens, you may need to check what information is associated with them, such as its user or expiry. We are introducing a new API endpoint that will allow you to get this data programmatically, instead of using the debug tool page. To use the API, simply issue an HTTP GET request to graph.facebook.com/debug_token with two parameters: input_token (the access token you want to debug) and access_token (your app token or user token of a developer of your app). For more information, please see the documentation.

New Shortcut for Paying by Mobile

With the mobile payments shortcut, you can provide a customized mobile payment flow that simplifies the user experience for purchasing with a mobile device and improves conversion. Instead of offering virtual currency price points that may not be supported on mobile, use this feature to find out what mobile price points are available for users based on their country and offer those as purchase options in your game. Once users make a selection, you can show a mobile-only pay dialog to confirm the purchase, eliminating other payment options from the dialog. Get more details on how to implement this feature by reading our documentation.

Get More Players to Pay with Payer Promotion Unit on Facebook.com

Many developers have implemented Payer Promotions and have seen increased payer conversion and revenue. Payer Promotion is subsidized by Facebook and allows you to offer eligible users a discount on your in-game currency, such as $3 of value for free. We previously launched features that allow you to create your own custom unit or use Dealspot to offer payer promotions in your game. Now Facebook will help you promote this offer for a discount on your in-game currency by showing a special banner or premium unit on your game's canvas page.

You can start taking advantage of this feature simply by implementing in-app currency orders and associating your currency with your app. Learn more about how to enable the payer promotion unit on Facebook.com for your game in our documentation.

Upcoming Breaking Changes

As announced in July, the following breaking changes will go into effect on October 3, 2012:

  • Built-in like/follow action required
  • Removing Bookmark URL
  • offline_access permission removal
  • Removing Live Stream plugin
  • Summary field being replaced by description field
  • Removing position field for photos
  • /picture connection will return a dictionary when callback is specified

Check out the Developer Roadmap for more info.

December 2012 Migration Now Available

The "December 2012 Breaking Changes" migration is now available for you to test your apps to see if they will be affected by the breaking changes happening on December 5th, 2012. Check out the Developer Roadmap for more information on what changes are included in the migration.

Weekly Stats

The following stats are for activity Wednesday, September 12 and Wednesday, September 19

Bugs Activity

  • 187 bugs were reported
  • 69 bugs were reproducible and accepted (after duplicates removed)
  • 5 bugs were by design
  • 27 bugs were fixed
  • 91 bugs were duplicate, invalid, or need more information

Bugs Fixed

Activity on facebook.stackoverflow.com

  • 418 questions asked
  • 325 questions with a score of 0 or greater
  • 100 answered, 31% answered rate
  • 183 replied, 56% reply rate

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