Facebook Platform News 11/17/09

We're releasing some updates to stream story formatting, FQL, and finding fans this week. These changes are going live with the weekly code push, which takes place Tuesday evening, Pacific Time.

Switching from the video Attachment Type

We're removing all reference to the video attachment type in stream stories. You should use the flash attachment type, since the flash type gives you more control over how your stories render.

While we'll continue to publish stories that use the video type, we strongly encourage you to start using the flash attachment type instead.

Finding Fans without a Session

You can call pages.isFan without a session key now, so you can determine whether a user is a fan of a Facebook Page without the user needing to authorize your application.

Ensuring User Privacy with FQL

You can help ensure user privacy in your applications by checking whether a given user has blocked the logged-in user. Select the is_blocked field when you query the user FQL table.

Rendering Stream Stories

As another reminder regarding the stream roadmap, next week we're changing the size of stream story images so that their maximum dimensions will be 90x90 pixels.

Also starting next week, if you include more than one image in your stream attachment, Facebook will render only the first image in the array initially. We're also adding a "See More" link so the user can see the remaining images. You can still include up to 5 images in a stream story.

We'll make another announcement on the Platform Live Status page next week confirming this launch.

We hope you start using these features and we welcome your feedback on the Developer Forum.

Pete, the technical writer on the Platform team, is rounding up the news.