Palm Developer Center Blog
New Facebook app now available
March 3 — Topics: Facebook App — Chuq Von Rospach
Today, we’re releasing a new version of our Facebook application for webOS. This application makes it easy to stay connected with your friends, share status updates, upload photos, check out your News Feed, browse your friends’ photo albums and profiles, get your upcoming events, and check your messages wherever you are. The app also integrates with other aspects of Palm webOS and Synergy, so you can instantly view Facebook info from the Contacts app, or use the Photo app to upload directly to Facebook.
New features include:
- Enhanced Inbox – Now, your inbox lets you compose, send, and reply, so you can always access your Facebook messages.
- Photo albums – Now you can view photo albums from all your friends, not just the photos in their news feeds. Uploading photos is easier as well, and includes the ability to add captions.
- Profiles – The new app lets you view users’ profiles, whether they are your friends or not. View and post to their walls, view their information, and see their photo albums (subject to privacy settings, of course).
- Events and birthdays – Now you can see upcoming birthdays from your friend list as well as upcoming events.
- Friend search – Easily find your friends using the Friend Search feature. This takes you to their profile, where you can see and post to their wall, view their information, and look at their photos.
This being the developer blog, what’s interesting to me is how this application was developed. The Developer Relations team took on the task of rewriting this application as a way to work on a “real” project and get a deeper understanding of how our developer tools and documentation work (and sometimes don’t work) for our developers.
Working on this application has given us a really detailed look at the current state of our tools and documents. Here in Developer Relations, we’ve been sitting down and evaluating the results and putting plans in place to remove as many of the speedbumps and potholes as we can, as quickly as we can.
I think you’ll be very impressed with the quality of this updated Facebook application. It’s even more impressive when you realize that while Ben and Dion, who did most of the heavy lifting on this update, are experienced programmers, they haven’t been webOS programmers very long. It’s a good example of how existing skills can transfer to the webOS platform and get a new developer up to speed and building good applications quickly.
Now that we have this rewritten-from-scratch version of the Facebook app out, we’re starting to look at what further enhancements we can add to it. We plan to continue using this application to push ourselves as webOS developers, and to step into the shoes of our developers and live with the tools we give them. We think that’s the best way to make sure those tools are the best tools we can possibly build. If we aren’t working with them daily, it’s easy to think they’re better than they are. By making sure we’re always creating “real” applications, we have no excuses not to make sure that our developer environment is the best it can be.
And that’s exactly what we expect it to be. We still have some work, but now we know what needs to be done, and we’re working to make it happen.
27 Comments
Terrific update! Now if I can just get notifications (and possibly background notifications too), it’ll be even better…
(and almost on par with the Android and iPhone apps)
Love the update, I’ve been waiting for it and am excited for the extra capability on my Pre. That said, my number one feature request is access to notifications, which have not been implemented (Yet?!). Until then, I think I’ll be stuck using touch.facebook.com, at lest to see if I have any new comments!
I think the Facebook mail should integrate with the email app. I would much rather have everything go through there. You can kill 2 birds with one stone. You can have the Facebook mail searchable, and you can have the UI send notifications because there is a new (Facebook) email.
I would also like to use universal search to look up a friends and have a link to view their profile. Please consider!
I downloaded the new App and cannot get past of the sign in screen.
Maybe you can now have your developers fix the memo app, so we can once-again categorize memos and sort them alphabetically or by date, like we could with the Treo, and since the first Palm OS. The current version is unmanageable with 1000+ memos. Memos are a serious tool for any smartphone.
Also, please enable 3rd party developers to give us the option of backing up their data to the cloud or to another website. This will enable 3rd party developers to make memo apps, etc., that we can trust our data to.
I’ve been nervous about installing the Facebook app as I *really* don’t want everyone I’m friends with on Facebook getting pulled into my contacts via Synergy. Is this configurable, or are my fears justified?
Featured on techcrunch too: http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/03/03/webos-gets-a-new-and-much-improved-facebook-app/
Did you use the standard facebook API? If so how were you able to send messages?
Are there any plans to integrate facebook IM into the message app?
Love the app so far…but background notifications are a must! Thanks!
The new FB app does not allow you to log-out. The only way to end a sesion (and therefore stop using data on our plan with Bell Mobility) is to delete the app!!
Also, my wife and I share this phone and both have FB accounts. With the original Pre app, you could log out, hand the phone over and allow them to log in. Can’t do this now! ARGGH!
I cannot get past the log-in screen of the app?
Love the app…I’m a new webOS user and love the platform. The FB app is great, but I agree with a lot of other people…notifications (and background notifications) would be great to have. I go back and forth between the app & touchsite to get them.
how come i cant get it to let me sign in…i hit sign in and it does NOTHING!!
how do you delete messages from the new facebook profile. There is no delete button?
Love the new update, also noticed that alot of times the refreshing notification message gets stuck in a loop. And also click on some of the links in the notifications like click on “photo of you” locks up the app.
HELP HELP HELP!!! i couldn’t used the Facebook app on my Palm Pre yet!! for some reason it won’t allow me to sign in. I’ve deleted and re-installed the app several times with no use.. it just won’t sign in into Facebook!!
any thoughts to share with me??
thanks
Hi – can you please explain how to add captions to photos that are uploaded to Facebook. I’ve uploaded a few photos but did not see a spot to add a caption. Thank you.
I’ve updated facebook on my phone now I can’t get my profile to refresh…..HELP what do I do
I am able to log on to facebook… but I can not get in to my applicatons like farmville or happy island.. i can get on mafia wars but not farmvill… it keeps telling me to download flash… I do but it still dows not work…
Just downloaded the app and love it! A few featurs I’d like:
*Would love IM capability. See who is online and send IMs.
*Added a status and after I got the answer, wanted to delete it—but can’t.
*No log out feature—is this going to be constantly running and draining battery?
*When someone comments on a photo and you get the notification, when you click the photo link it throws an error “Unable to display photo”.
Overall great improvement, especially in scrolling through the newsfeed!! Thanks!
“an error occured requesting service palm://com.palm.facebook. Error Message: Service Method Exception: java.land.NullPointerException” helpp!!!!!
Where did you see this error? Was it in the Facebook app, another app, or in a program you are developing?
Mayra, we only support features that are actually provided by Facebook the company and core platform at this time. The games you mention are made by other companies and integrated into the Facebook website, but use technologies that only allow them to work in desktop browsers.
it says you can access facebook pages from the contact list, how do i do this?
when i go to the contacts, i cant view anyone facebook page when i click on their name.
i tried resyncing facebook conacts and that did nothing.
The Facebook app worked well on my first Pre though I’d receive an error when trying to view a photo from notifications. Now, I still can’t view photos through notifications and I also get an invalid notification error. Deleted and redownloaded the app. Cleared browser cache and cookies. Nada.
Facebook for Palm Pre will not let me comment under a photo ive gotten a notification of in bold. When i click on the bold “photo” it says at the top Communication Error…”an error occured communicating with the server. Error Message: “Invalid notification ID specified”. Then it has either RETRY or DISMISS…neither of which work. I also can’t seem to delete anything i write under a stat update or on someone’s wall if i want to change my comment. Please fix thanx!
I’m seconding jason’s comment. I don’t see any new integration using Synergy on the Contacts app, no status availability or anything.