Interactive Rich Media

Firebug (version 1.3.3), developped by Joe Hewitt and Rob Campbell, is a free and open source (BSD) debug tool. It integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of tools at the fingertips of web designers. The tool allows to edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

Firebug makes it simple to find HTML elements buried deep in the page. Firebug’s CSS tabs tell you everything you need to know about the styles in your web pages, and if you don’t like what it’s telling you, you can make changes and see them take effect instantly. When your CSS boxes aren’t lining up correctly it can be difficult to understand why. Let Firebug be your eyes and it will measure and illustrate all the offsets, margins, borders, padding, and sizes for you. Your pages are taking a long time to load, but why? (JavaScript, image compression, partner’s servers). Firebug breaks it all down for you file-by-file. When things go wrong, Firebug lets you know immediately and gives you detailed and useful information about errors in JavaScript, CSS, and XML. The Document Object Model is a great big hierarchy of objects and functions just waiting to be tickled by JavaScript. Firebug helps you find DOM objects quickly and then edit them on the fly. The command line is one of the oldest tools in the programming toolbox. Firebug gives you a good ol’ fashioned command line for JavaScript complete with very modern amenities. Having a fancy JavaScript debugger is great, but sometimes the fastest way to find bugs is just to dump as much information to the console as you can. Firebug gives you a set of powerful logging functions that help you get answers fast.

FB.Connect.showFeedDialog is a very powerful method which pops up a Feed form, without the need of a session, and an iframe pops up letting the user confirm publication of a story.

The required parameters are:

• template_bundle_id  string
  The id of the feed template you want to use
• template_data  object
  Data associated with the template (for short and full stories)
• target_id array
  If you are publishing to other people’s Feeds, this array contains that friend’s user ID. The Feed story template must include the {*target*} token
• body_general string
  Associated text for short and full stories
• story_size FeedStorySize
  This parameter has been deprecated. Pass null in its place
• require_connect RequireConnect
  Either FB.RequireConnect.doNotRequire, FB.RequireConnect.require, or FB.RequireConnect.promptConnect - The action to occur if the user has not authorized this application
• callback Callback
  Callback to be executed after function is completed

The optional parameters are :

• user_message_prompt string
  The label (which could be in the form of a question) that appears above the text box on the Feed form
• user_message object
  A simple JavaScript object containing single property, value, which is set to the content that the user enters into the Feed form. When the Feed form is created, you can pass along this object to populate suggested text in the text box. The user can then edit this text. When the user publishes the Feed form, Facebook sets the value property to whatever text the user typed

Some tutorials about the FB.Connect.showFeedDialog method are shown hereafter :

• Facebook Developer : JS API M FB.Connect.showFeedDialog
• by Blake Schwendiman : Publishing to Facebook using Facebook Connect
• Zack and Miri : share your interest using Facebook Connect
• Facebook Cookbook : Feed
• Facebook Connect and KickApps

One of the hard things about developing on the Facebook Platform has been testing applications. Facebook’s Terms of Service require that all accounts be linked to your real identity, so it’s not allowed to make fake accounts to test things with.

Facebook formalized the concept of test accounts with the following url
http://www.facebook.com/developers/become_test_account.php
which converts a real account to a test account with an affiliation to the Facebook Platform Developer Test Accounts network. The test account status can be removed from the Network Settings page.

More informations about test accounts are available at the Facebook Developer website.

My test accounts are :

• Alice Paris (français) : uid = 1589435275
• Hans Berlin (deutsch) : uid = 100000006032142
• Jerry London (english) : uid = 1776326306

These three users are friends.