The new Facebook app creation flow is really confusing.

For developers, to add a app as a tab to another page, you  need to user the following URL:

https://www.facebook.com/dialog/pagetab?app_id=YOUR_APP_ID&next=YOUR_URL

next parameter should be your canvas page url.

Here you can see an option to add this app to your page.

A normal Fan page of Facebook would like this:

https://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=xxxxxxxxxx&sk=app_XXXXXX

This Url will call your domain, say example.com inside the iframe to load the page.

Each time the iframe is loaded, Facebook do a POST to this iframe URL with some data which we can use to identify the status of the user, eg, whether the user already liked this page, or any other parameter is passed through the fan page url.

Facebook keep app_data variable for developers to pass additional parameters to your iframe page.

eg: https://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=xxxxxxxxxx&sk=app_XXXXXX&app_data=mydata

To retrieve this information, in PHP, use can use the following code:

<?php

if(isset($_REQUEST["signed_request"]))
{

$signed_request = $_REQUEST["signed_request"];
// $_POST also work, but better with $_REQUEST

list($encoded_sig, $payload) = explode(‘.’, $signed_request, 2);

$data = json_decode(base64_decode(strtr($payload, ‘-_’, ‘+/’)), true);

if(isset($data['app_data']))
{
$mydata = $data['app_data']; //here you can get the value you passed
}
}

?>

Check my article here  to see how you can get the ‘like’ status using PHP

Courtesy: From various online sources

Thanks
Sajith

Two months ago, I published a jQuery plugin to record audio from browser (without any Media server) called jRecorder

I got many responses and requests to maintain the code with new enhancements and some bug fixes.

Based on that, a new version (1.1) is released which has the capability to preview the recorded audio before sending to the server.

See the example implementation and documentation here.

Also I made this source open and available for anybody to develop at: https://github.com/sythoos/jRecorder/

Thanks

Sajith

I use that platform for writing quick programming tips, and which I feel  really interesting.

Here are my recent 4 posts:

Upload File using PhoneGap

PhoneGap new version comes with upload/download file support in iPhone/Android and BlackBerry

Problem in PhoneGap accessing external URL

Article on how to access a 3rd party website content using PhoneGap (Default setting does not allow this)

Change Browser Address Location using Javascript (w/o reloading)

Article on manipulating browser address bar without reloading the page. Do not work for IE

Get filetype from header without checking extension in Unix

Get the MIME type of a file without checking the extension of the file (Good way – Unix style)

Thanks

Sajith

Today I tried Angry Birds Welcome Screen in HTML5. Use Latest Safari for HTML5 with Sounds. In my Mozilla Animation works but no sound.

(If you are viewing this post via Email, click the link to see the animation)

Click for FULLSCREEN

I will try to amend this if get time.

Click for FULLSCREEN

You can download Adobe Edge Trail Version here.

Also see what others did with Adobe Edge here:

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/resources/

In PHP coding, we spend most of the time for debugging. Either we use echo, print_r or var_dump to check variable values or check whether a particular function is executing or not.

These all things are outputting something to browser. This is not applicable in case of redirection, or image processing (GD) or sometimes with callback url for Payment integrations.

header(Location: etc);may cause Warning : header is already sent , if you put an echo or debug and you cannot  see the output, since it redirects into some other page.

Here is your remote debugging console to solve these problems. http://vardump.it

Copy the url from the site and use that url for your debugging purpose and keep the console open in another tab.

eg:

<?php

file_get_contents(‘http://vardump.it/253522/inserted-into-database’);  // last part of this url is your debugging message

?>

You can see these messages from your remote console http://vardump.it/253522 (last numbers are your unique key)

The debug url is formatted in this way: http://vardump.it/debug-id/your message here

Email me for more details.

More features like watch, break etc are under development

If you are using https pages or some of the pages (payment pages etc) in your website, keep the following in your mind. In some browsers especially IE shows warning of non-secured content in secured page. This cause user the feeling that the website is not secured.

1. Use relative url always. Relative URL means those without starting with http:// or https://, instead use relative url.
2. If you need to use full url, use dynamic base name in with your programming language.For example in PHP, define BASE_URL = http://www.yoursite.com and use this variable in every links and forms. Change the BASE_URL value between http and https depending upon the protocol ($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'])
3. Check  inside javascript function whether it is calling any non-secured url. (For example, sometime you may use full url inside Javascript). Check using if condition to decide, which protocol to use, like what Google Analytic does.
   eg:  (“https:” == document.location.protocol) ? “https://ssl.” : “http://www.”);
4. Check if there is any flash content which tries to load data from non-secured url. There is a chance to load some xml configuration files using http protocol
5. Also change the codebase parameter value in object tag (flash or other media) whether it is pointing http or https url. There is a chance for this url in flash content.
   codebase=”http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave /cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,115,0″
   Change this url to https://downoad…
   
   
6. If you are using facebook connect or such integration, check the javascript initialisation code.
   FB.init(“78bc8ffb87c41eabb6395a2045c76021″, “/xd_receiver.htm“);
   Inside the xd_receiver.htm file, the cross platform callback will be non secured url (http)
   Change this to xd_reciver_ssl.htm and use new code, which is available in Facebook documentation

Tools like Fiddler can be used to check which url is non-secured. Firebug cannot show all non-secure connections. If the above steps do not solve your problem, try disabling javascript files one by one to point out which call is making the problem. Also try this by disabling Flash objects one by one.

Good luck guys

Cheers

Sajith

You can create iPhone style flip using jQuery.

Visit: http://lab.smashup.it/flip/ for more details

This is just an information for those who wanted to record on screen tutorial videos or capture images. I use Jing. A free version for software is available. It is for both Mac and Windows. It is very easy to make screen capture videos

Go to: http://www.jingproject.com/