Anatomy of a Facebook Application

• Product Directory
• About
• Left Nav
• Facebook Canvas Pages
• Home
• User Dashboard
• Settings
• Profile
• Profile Box
• Profile Action Links
• Privacy Settings
• News Feed
• Alerts
• Message Attachments
• Requests

Belowyou will see all these various components as they are applied to ourown Photos Application. It should be noted that none of these pages aremandatory but the more you include in your application the richer theexperience becomes (for example, no one's going to install your appcalled "Lefty" that is only a left nav link)

Product Directory

Manyusers may find your application by browsing the Facebook ApplicationDirectory. This is where beautiful imagery and concise, descriptivetext pay off.

About

Theabout page tells users about the application and is accessed from theFacebook Application Directory. It should inspire users to install theapplication.

Left Nav

Applicationscan have their icon and name added to the left hand Facebooknavigation. This will link to that application's homepage.

Facebook Canvas Pages

FacebookCanvas pages are presented within the Facebook frame and can either beFBML or an external html site presented within an iframe.

Home

Anapplication's homepage is accessed from the Facebook Left Nav. Ideallythis homepage would aggregate friend data to create a page worth comingback to quite often. For example, the photo homepage shows yourfriends' recently created albums.

User Dashboard

Theuser dashboard is usually accessed from the top right drop-down menu inthe user's profile. This is where users manage their own content withinan application or see information about another user's content withinthat application.

Profile

TheFacebook profile is the online representation of the user's real worldidentity. We have included many integration points on the profile. Thisenables you to empower the user to express themselves through yourapplication.

Profile Box

The profile boxis usually the place to show the most recently updated information orthe most recent actions of the user. This information should reflecthow the user would want to represent their identity through yourapplication on their profile.

Profile Action Links

Undera user's photo in their profile you can display a quick link to moreinfo about that user's presence within your application. You caninstall these links even for users who haven't installed yourapplication; have added your application (or, in the case of theprofile of a user who has added your application, it will show up forall viewers).

Privacy Settings

Userswill be able to set who can see your application's profile box fromFacebook's privacy page. Any other privacy settings you wish toincorporate should be built into your application's privacy/settingspage.

News Feed

Applicationscan access News Feed and post stories to it. Each user has a maximumnumber of News Feed stories that they can see from all applications.Once that maximum is reached they will no longer see any moreapplication stories during that sweep. For example, the Photosapplication publishes News Feed stories about photos your friends haveuploaded recently.

Alerts

Applicationscan send notifications to a user through email. The user of theapplication who triggers this action must approve of the email, andusers can opt out of receiving the email for any application that hasever sent them emails.

Message Attachments

Applicationscan create attachments that appear in a dropdown menu on the messagecomposer. When the user selects that action, content is fetched andplaced inside an attachment box below the message text in the composer.

Requests

Applicationscan create requests that show up at the top right of a user's homepage.These requests are usually initiated by a user's friend and oftenrequire the user to take some form of action. An example of this in thePhotos application is a photo tag request confirmation.