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EddieC 0 Posting Whiz in Training

Today marks the one-year anniversary of Facebook Platform, which has had a rough childhood and now bears the pimples of adolescence. On the eve of the platform’s birthday, the company gave developers a sandbox in which to apply the Clearasil of its redesigned profile.

Before entering the sandbox, be sure to visit the for news and other known issues. At the moment, the sandbox is for developers’ eyes only.

“We believe that the new design makes profiles cleaner and simpler, gives users more control over their profiles, and emphasizes recent and relevant information,” wrote Facebook’s Pete Bratach, in a yesterday.

The design adds new , which are intended mainly to help developers generate real user activity (as opposed to spam from so-called black-hat apps).

Here’s an excerpt from the documentation showing the key improvements to integration points:

1. New forms of user-to-user communication.

  • o New Feed story sizes and types give you more ways to help users share content on their profiles and in News Feed.
  • o Publisher integration enables users to easily post content of any type on their –- and their friends' -- profiles. This is a significant upgrade over Wall attachments.

2. Deeper profile integration.

  • o Application tabs enable users to share unique content from their favorite deep applications.
  • o Profile boxes enable users to express themselves in smaller forms than tabs. Users now have more placements for profile boxes including on the left-hand column as well as on the “Boxes” tab.
  • o Application info sections enable users to share structured content from applications on the Info tab.

3. Streamlined install/login flow.

  • o A simplified login process should significantly increase the number of users who visit and explore your application.
  • o Note: Certain permissions granted on the add page such as adding a profile box or link in navigation will be migrated to new flows in the Facebook user experience.

Facebook recommends that developers migrate their apps immediately, but says old apps will continue to work. They’ll be migrated automatically when the redesign launches in June. Facebook also posted a that it says demonstrates each of the integration points.

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As points out, the developer-only sandbox is the right place to exercise the redesigned profile before it goes public. Treat the preview as a verification environment: focus less on feature checklists and more on real interaction flows, permission handling, and how stories and small profile placements behave in the wild.

A practical migration checklist:

  1. Create a non-production copy of the app and at least two test accounts with a friend relationship to simulate real interactions.
  2. Exercise the full install/login flow and record all permission denials. Ensure the app degrades gracefully when permissions are declined.
  3. Publish realistic stories from the app (text, images, links) and confirm how they appear at different sizes and in friends feeds.
  4. Verify profile placements (tabs/boxes) across browsers and screen sizes to catch overflow, truncation, or CSS conflicts.
  5. Add server-side logging for all platform calls and set alerts for spikes in auth/permission errors or failed publishes.
  6. Treat any sample code as a learning tool; adapt patterns to production-quality error handling and input sanitization.

Common troubleshooting notes and quick pattern:

  • Use browser DevTools to inspect network calls and response bodies when a publish or install fails.
  • Log and display friendly fallbacks when a required permission is missing instead of failing silently.
  • Watch for UI assumptions (popups, redirects) that differ between the old and new install flows.

A minimal permission-check pattern:

if (!hasPermission('publish')) {
  showInstallPrompt('Allow posting so stories display correctly');
} else {
  publishStory({ title, body, image });
}

The sandbox is an opportunity to simplify UX, remove noisy or spammy story behavior, and ensure smooth permission handling before the public rollout. Monitoring and small iterative fixes during the preview almost always prevent larger problems after launch.

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