Facebook Kills Connect, Makes App Creation Easier, Simpler

As I’ve been writing Facebook Application Development for Dummies (now available on Amazon for pre-order!), there has been one thing I have been noticing: Despite all the new focus on Facebook’s Graph API, Facebook has still had a lot of conflicting focus on their old, more complicated, Connect APIs, making it a fun thing to try and explain in a Dummies book.  That confusion was evident especially in the application creation screens, where Facebook had page after page of options to fill out that they were no longer focusing on, “Widgets” to configure (which Facebook doesn’t even link to any more), and odd terminology that just doesn’t make sense any more.  Add to that the fact that, just announced, Facebook is killing the FBML versions of apps in favor of the iframe (and FBML itself in favor of Social Plugins), a lot of stuff just didn’t make sense in their app creation process any more.

Some time recently it appears Facebook finally fixed that.  Now Facebook has just 5 categories to fill out when creating your application or Facebook-integrated website, and there are no confusing terms such as “Connect”, or “Widgets”, or “Canvas”.  Facebook is focusing on 5 things: “About”, “Website”, “Facebook Integration”, “Mobile”, and “Advanced”.  I think from the titles of the sections these things are obvious, and it also shows that Facebook is putting an increased focus on external use of their applications on websites and mobile and less on Facebook itself.  We also see this with the removal of custom tabs on personal profiles (they will still be available for your business Page, have no fear!).  In addition, Facebook has removed the long Application key, and is now putting focus on just the Application ID and Application Secret – this is a move they have been pushing towards since the launch of Graph API at their F8 developers conference earlier in the year.

In addition, Facebook has added 3 experimental new features you can turn on, to focus more on their new OAuth 2.0 authentication process.  One of my biggest frustrations in trying to document all of this in my book has been the lack of consistency.  Getting graph API to handle authentication on a Facebook.com-hosted app in the past has been a horrendous experience, pretty much forcing developers back to the old way of authorization.  Now it should be easier for developers to fully focus on the new Graph API methods, both in and out of Facebook.  It is completely clear that Graph API is the future, and Social Plugins are replacing FBML (unfortunately for my second book).

While frustrating as I try to adapt my book, these changes are welcome, and should make creation and configuration of apps much easier for developers in the future.  Especially with the future removal of the need to configure FBML or iFrame, along with Profile tabs, setting up an application should be a piece of cake for both novices and experienced developers alike.  I’m sure it also makes the support process for Facebook a lot easier as well.

I hope other app platforms can take Facebook’s lead on their API.  Out of all of them, Facebook’s new focus is dirt simple and easy for the most novice of programmers to learn.

Are you working on a Facebook app?  How does this affect your development on Facebook platform?