Facebook

Facebook: The Missing Manual, 3rd Edition

Facebook's spreading about as far and fast as the Web itself: 500 million members and counting. But there's a world of fun packed into the site that most folks miss. With this bestselling guide, learn how to unlock Facebook's talents as personal website creator, souped-up address book, and bustling community forum. It's an eye-opening, timesaving tour, guaranteed to help you get the most out of your Facebook experience.

Coverage includes:

  • Get started, get connected. Signing up is easy, but the real payoff comes when you tap into networks of coworkers, classmates, and friends. Pick and choose who gets to see what, and learn how to steer clear of people you want to avoid.
  • Add applications. Transform your Facebook account into an addictive, one-stop resource with thousands of mini-programs, ranging from silly to serious.
  • Go professional. Facebook isn’t just for college kids. Thousands of companies and businesspeople use the site for everything from project collaboration and advertising to filling (and finding) jobs. You’ll learn all the tricks.
  • Protect your privacy. You may feel too exposed with so much personal info on display. This book features an easy-to-follow, multi-pronged approach to staying safe on Facebook.
What You'll Find in the Book

Regardless of why you’re on Facebook (or thinking about registering), chances are you fall into at least one of the following categories: parent, student, or teacher.

If you’re a parent, ask your kid to friend you (Chapter 3) so you can see what she’s up to. Then tweak your settings (Chapter 5) to maximize the chance that if your daughter posts, say, a picture of herself at a concert that was held the night she was supposed to be home studying, you’ll hear about it.

You taught your kids how to use a fork, and you need to teach your children how to act online, too—because, statistically speaking, they don’t know. Studies show that most teens take what they read online at face value; don’t realize that people outside their circle of friends can see what they put on Facebook; and routinely post inappropriate info, such as their home addresses. And this kind of behavior can have serious consequences, from cyber-bullying and cyber-stalking to lowered grades and job prospects (teachers and recruiters know how to use Facebook, too—and what your child posts today will be archived forever). Just knowing you’re lurking in the Facebook shadows may be enough to keep your kid behaving appropriately.

If you’re a student, you need to know how to keep your private life private on Facebook. You absolutely, positively need to read Chapter 13 and work through your privacy settings one by one. After you’ve done that, amp up your privacy by:

    • Keeping it clean. Facebook archives everything you put on the site, so the stuff you intended as a joke could cause you a lot of grief in a few years when, say, you meet the love of your life—or the recruiter for your dream job.

    • Going easy on the pix. Don’t upload pictures that show you having more fun than you ought to have. Doesn’t matter if you yank ’em down after your pals get a look: The instant you upload a picture, Facebook owns it and some alert somebody could save a copy and email it to everyone in existence before you remove it.

  • Assuming your profs, parents, best friend, and worst enemy can see everything you post. There are a lot of ways people can get access to your Facebook account, so don’t assume that only your best buds can see what you do on the site—even if you tweaked your privacy settings, because those settings change over time and there’s always a hack.

If you’re a teacher, don’t bother trying to use Facebook to teach. No study yet has shown that the site can be used effectively in education—and anecdotal evidence suggests that it can’t. Students tend to think of Facebook as “their” place, not an exciting extension to the classroom, and there’s little (if anything) you can do on Facebook that you can’t accomplish behind a lectern.

However, if you’re having trouble contacting students via email or phone—to remind them of an assignment coming due, for example—try befriending them on Facebook, adding them to a Friend List (Chapter 3), and sending them Messages (Chapter 4). If your students are college age, you’ll likely get quicker responses that way.

While you’re on Facebook, take a few minutes to peruse the profiles of any students riding the line between grades. You may be surprised at how many students whose grandmothers’ sudden illnesses prevented them from taking your final somehow had time to post wild party photos from (one can only conclude) Grandma’s bedside.

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Build social Flash applications fully integrated with the Facebook Graph API

  • Build your own interactive applications and games that integrate with Facebook
  • Add social features to your AS3 projects without having to build a new social network from scratch
  • Learn how to retrieve information from Facebook's database
  • A hands-on guide with step-by-step instructions and clear explanation that encourages experimentation and play

In Detail

The Facebook platform provides you with an ideal solution for building rich, social experiences on the web to develop an effective user experience application. Combined with Flash which effectively enables social interactions, you can create a fully functional application on Facebook. If you've been waiting to get started with your own applications and games on Facebook, with this book you don't have to wait any longer.

This book takes you through everything you need to know to integrate your AS3 apps and games with Facebook accompanied by illustrative screenshots and short quizzes.It presents you with in depth coverage of the key underlying concepts such as creating a basic application that runs inside Facebook and exploring the Graph API which greatly simplifies how developers can retrieve data. This book also covers topics on security, permissions and authentication features on Facebook.

This beginner's guide starts off by teaching you about retrieving simple public data and then rapidly working your way up to authenticating users, building powerful searches across the entire database, and uploading photos and other content.

Throughout the book, you'll learn by building two fundamental components: an RIA Facebook interface and an AS3 SDK that you can drop into any project to add Facebook integration. This easy-to-understand guide has everything written as AS3-only projects with publicly available components, so you can follow along whether you use Flash Pro, Flex, or MXMLC - as long as you know AS3!

This hands-on tutorial will present you with a whole new perspective of the three core aspects of Facebook - searching, retrieving, and updating the data .This practical book focuses on how to set up an application on Facebook and how to deal with different contexts like AIR.

By the end of this book, you will be confident enough to set up your own application and create social interactions for users to share on Facebook.

Everything you need to know from integrating applications and games to searching, retrieving, and updating data on Facebook

What you will learn from this book

  • Make your AS3 projects more social and personalise them for your users by adding Facebook integration
  • Grab information directly from Facebook into your applications by using Facebook's Graph API
  • Securely authenticate your users with OAuth 2.0 to log them into Facebook
  • Access information about your users and their friends directly from Facebook - no need to make them type it all in again
  • Upload photographs, add wall posts, and create events through AS3
  • Search on Facebook's databases with the powerful Facebook Query Language
  • Build an AS3 Facebook SDK that you can drop into any AS3 project to add Facebook integration
  • Easily access both public and private Facebook data from the surface of a graph
  • Learn with exercises and fun examples illustrated with diagrams and screenshots

Approach

This step-by-step book gives you an empty shell of an AS3 Facebook RIA, and guides you through writing the Facebook interaction code by means of fun examples, exercises, and code snippets.This beginner's guide focuses on getting you through all the major learning points in a smooth, logical order. You'll also see how to avoid some common pitfalls.

Who this book is written for

If you are an AS3 developer who wants to create applications and games that integrate with Facebook - either on the Facebook website itself or off it, then this book is for you. Even if you have no previous experience with Facebook, databases, or server-side programming , you can count on this book.

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In Detail

Using Facebook Applications, developers can add custom features to one of the most popular websites in the world. Facebook is the biggest social network among college students, and is gaining ground among professionals too. Facebook applications enable you to add new ways for users to interact with each other using Facebook.

Facebook applications are written in a server-side language, and hosted on the application developer's own server. They interface with Facebook, so that they appear to users to be part of Facebook itself.

This book shows PHP developers how to quickly get started building powerful Facebook applications, how to work with data stored in Facebook, including photos, and how to handle multimedia and other custom data within Facebook applications.

The book covers how to send notifications and invitations from within an application, update a user's profile, create application control panels for users, and much more.

What you will learn from this book?

  • Learn Facebook application development through step-by-step examples.
  • Build data-driven Facebook applications, work with friends lists, photo galleries, multimedia, and more.
  • Work with Facebook's security model to produce applications that are safe and functional.
  • Communicate with users through newsfeeds, notifications, invitations, and messages.
  • Learn the Facebook PHP API, and the various markup languages you'll need to build Facebook applications: Mock Ajax, FBML, FBJS (a variant of JavaScript especially for Facebook), and FQL.

Approach

This book builds on your knowledge as a PHP developer to provide a fast-paced, step-by-step tutorial in building Facebook applications. The book is packed with example code and demo applications, so that you can see techniques in action. Along the way we provide quick references to the most important aspects of the API, so you can refer back as you develop your own applications with the book.

Who this book is written for?

This book is for PHP5 developers who want to create custom Facebook applications. It assumes no knowledge of the Facebook API or Platform, but does assume that you are a Facebook user.

Image

In Detail

Using Facebook Applications, developers can add custom features to one of the most popular websites in the world. Facebook is the biggest social network among college students, and is gaining ground among professionals too. Facebook applications enable you to add new ways for users to interact with each other using Facebook.

Facebook applications are written in a server-side language, and hosted on the application developer's own server. They interface with Facebook, so that they appear to users to be part of Facebook itself.

This book shows PHP developers how to quickly get started building powerful Facebook applications, how to work with data stored in Facebook, including photos, and how to handle multimedia and other custom data within Facebook applications.

The book covers how to send notifications and invitations from within an application, update a user's profile, create application control panels for users, and much more.

What you will learn from this book?

  • Learn Facebook application development through step-by-step examples.
  • Build data-driven Facebook applications, work with friends lists, photo galleries, multimedia, and more.
  • Work with Facebook's security model to produce applications that are safe and functional.
  • Communicate with users through newsfeeds, notifications, invitations, and messages.
  • Learn the Facebook PHP API, and the various markup languages you'll need to build Facebook applications: Mock Ajax, FBML, FBJS (a variant of JavaScript especially for Facebook), and FQL.

Approach

This book builds on your knowledge as a PHP developer to provide a fast-paced, step-by-step tutorial in building Facebook applications. The book is packed with example code and demo applications, so that you can see techniques in action. Along the way we provide quick references to the most important aspects of the API, so you can refer back as you develop your own applications with the book.

Who this book is written for?

This book is for PHP5 developers who want to create custom Facebook applications. It assumes no knowledge of the Facebook API or Platform, but does assume that you are a Facebook user.

Image

Build social Flash applications fully integrated with the Facebook Graph API

  • Build your own interactive applications and games that integrate with Facebook
  • Add social features to your AS3 projects without having to build a new social network from scratch
  • Learn how to retrieve information from Facebook's database
  • A hands-on guide with step-by-step instructions and clear explanation that encourages experimentation and play

In Detail

The Facebook platform provides you with an ideal solution for building rich, social experiences on the web to develop an effective user experience application. Combined with Flash which effectively enables social interactions, you can create a fully functional application on Facebook. If you've been waiting to get started with your own applications and games on Facebook, with this book you don't have to wait any longer.

This book takes you through everything you need to know to integrate your AS3 apps and games with Facebook accompanied by illustrative screenshots and short quizzes.It presents you with in depth coverage of the key underlying concepts such as creating a basic application that runs inside Facebook and exploring the Graph API which greatly simplifies how developers can retrieve data. This book also covers topics on security, permissions and authentication features on Facebook.

This beginner's guide starts off by teaching you about retrieving simple public data and then rapidly working your way up to authenticating users, building powerful searches across the entire database, and uploading photos and other content.

Throughout the book, you'll learn by building two fundamental components: an RIA Facebook interface and an AS3 SDK that you can drop into any project to add Facebook integration. This easy-to-understand guide has everything written as AS3-only projects with publicly available components, so you can follow along whether you use Flash Pro, Flex, or MXMLC - as long as you know AS3!

This hands-on tutorial will present you with a whole new perspective of the three core aspects of Facebook - searching, retrieving, and updating the data .This practical book focuses on how to set up an application on Facebook and how to deal with different contexts like AIR.

By the end of this book, you will be confident enough to set up your own application and create social interactions for users to share on Facebook.

Everything you need to know from integrating applications and games to searching, retrieving, and updating data on Facebook

What you will learn from this book

  • Make your AS3 projects more social and personalise them for your users by adding Facebook integration
  • Grab information directly from Facebook into your applications by using Facebook's Graph API
  • Securely authenticate your users with OAuth 2.0 to log them into Facebook
  • Access information about your users and their friends directly from Facebook - no need to make them type it all in again
  • Upload photographs, add wall posts, and create events through AS3
  • Search on Facebook's databases with the powerful Facebook Query Language
  • Build an AS3 Facebook SDK that you can drop into any AS3 project to add Facebook integration
  • Easily access both public and private Facebook data from the surface of a graph
  • Learn with exercises and fun examples illustrated with diagrams and screenshots

Approach

This step-by-step book gives you an empty shell of an AS3 Facebook RIA, and guides you through writing the Facebook interaction code by means of fun examples, exercises, and code snippets.This beginner's guide focuses on getting you through all the major learning points in a smooth, logical order. You'll also see how to avoid some common pitfalls.

Who this book is written for

If you are an AS3 developer who wants to create applications and games that integrate with Facebook - either on the Facebook website itself or off it, then this book is for you. Even if you have no previous experience with Facebook, databases, or server-side programming , you can count on this book.

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Sams Teach Yourself Facebook® in 10 Minutes, Second Edition offers straightforward, practical answers when you need fast results. By working through 10-minute lessons, you’ll learn everything you need to know to quickly and easily get up to speed with Facebook.

 

Tips point out shortcuts and solutions

 

Cautions help you avoid common pitfalls

 

Notes provide additional information

 

10 minutes is all you need to learn how to…

  • Start a new account and build a profile page
  • Connect with friends, coworkers, and family members
  • Post status updates, comments, and view news feeds
  • Communicate through Wall posts, messages, and live chat
  • Create a blog with Facebook notes
  • Share photos, videos, and favorite links
  • Add applications to enhance your Facebook experience
  • Share a hobby or interest using Facebook groups
  • Keep track of upcoming events and happenings
  • Create an official Page for a band, business, or other organization
  • Keep connected with Facebook through your mobile device
  • Control your privacy settings and keep your information safe

 

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