In early March, Facebook introduced its new News Feed to the world. The new News Feed puts much more of an emphasis on consuming content with larger pictures among other changes. Facebook has already given developers a few tips on how to get the most out of it, but now it’s starting to dole out the rules and regulations for the new News Feed.
During its weekly Operation Developer Love update, Facebook said that it’s going to start rolling out the new News Feed to more users. In preparation, Facebook says that developers should update their images. News Feed photos must now be at least 200×200 pixels, but Facebook encourages developers stick to 600×600 pixel images for the best experience across desktop and mobile.
So, what happens to images smaller than 200×200 pixels? Facebook says they may not show up at all. They also says that rectangular photos may be cropped automatically to fit within the new square environment of the new News Feed. As for other requirements, images can not be bigger than 4 Megapixel or 5 megabytes. Facebook will only support JPG, PNG, GIF and BMP formats in the new News Feed as well.
In other changes, Facebook will start defaulting new apps to its “sandbox mode.” In other words, all new apps can only be accessed by admins and developers when they’re first submitted. Developers now don’t have to worry about users accidentally accessing an unfinished app.
Keeping in line with its 90-day notice on breaking changes, Facebook has also announced the breaking changes that will go into effet on July 10:
Social plugins will require an absolute URL in the ‘href’ parameter
Social plugins, such as the Like Box and Like Button, will require an absolute URL in the ‘href’ parameter.
Page ‘category’ field name change
We are renaming the ‘category’ field to ‘category_lists’ for Pages Graph API
Stream table will throw exception with invalid filter_key
Query stream_filter table for a set of valid stream filters. The stream table will throw an exception if called with an invalid ‘filter_key’ option.
Removing ‘publish_checkins’ permissions
Publishing a Checkin object is deprecated in favor of creating an Open Graph story with a location attached. You can also create a Post with a location attached using the ‘publish_action’ permission.
FQL Checkin table ‘page_id’ change
We are renaming ‘page_id’ to ‘target_id’ for the Checkin table.
Removing ‘version’ field for Groups
We introduced ‘version’ field to indicate whether the group was created prior to launch of the current groups product in October 2010. We are removing this field as all Groups on Facebook are now the same version. This impacts both Group Graph API and Group FQL Table.
Photos will no longer return larger sizes than the uploaded version
‘images’ field in photos and photo_src table will no longer return image sizes larger than the original uploaded version of the photo.
Cannot create multiple create actions for the same Open Graph object
We are no longer allowing multiple create actions for the same Open Graph object, as documented here.
Deprecating ‘comments’ field from ‘stream’ FQL table
We are deprecating the ‘comments’ field from ‘stream’ FQL table. Please select the ‘comment_info’ column to fetch the ‘can_comment’ and ‘comment_count’ fields (formerly called ‘can_post’ and ‘count’), and use the comment table directly to retrieve the list of comments.
Removing ‘xid’, ‘reply_xid’, ‘username’ and ‘comments’ from ‘comment’ FQL table
We are removing the fields on the FQL ‘comment’ table that were used exclusively for legacy Comments Plugins — ‘xid’, ‘reply_xid’, ‘username’ and ‘comments’. We now treat comments the same across plugins and within Facebook. Please query for comment replies left on the plugin the same way as you would for other comments.
Removing ‘count’ from ‘comments’ Graph API connection
We are removing the undocumented ‘count’ field on the ‘comments’ connection in the Graph API. Please request ‘{id}/comments?summary=true’ explicitly if you would like the summary field which contains the count (now called ‘total_count’)
Mobile App Install Ads change
We are updating the Creative Spec parameter ‘app_platform_type’ to ‘mobile_store’. The possible values for mobile_store are now “itunes”, “itunes_ipad”, and “google_play”.
Conversion spec and tracking pixel ID changes
We are deprecating the use of ‘tracking_pixel_id’ when specifying the desire to track a conversion pixel in an ad. You should instead specify the pixel in the newly launched tracking_specs field. We are also deprecating the use of conversion specs in bid types that are not optimized for actions (e.g. CPM, CPC, and oCPM when no bid value is placed on actions). You should instead use tracking_specs to track conversions for these bid types.
Custom Audiences change
We have changed the targeting spec parameter ‘excluded_user_adclusters’ to be ‘excluded_custom_audiences’. Additionally, the endpoint to create and retrieve your custom audiences is now: https://graph.facebook.com/(act_adaccountid)/customaudiences.
Accessing link stats change
App access tokens will be required for accessing the link_stat FQL table. App access tokens will also be required for retrieving data from Graph API endpoint for link stats, ie: http://graph.facebook.com/?id=http://example.com.
Graph API search changes
App access tokens will be required for all search Graph API calls except Places and Pages. Search for application will no longer be supported.
Open Graph apps using custom actions for fitness, books, movies, and TV
As announced in March, any apps that previously used custom actions to represent this type of sharing will need to move to common actions by July 10, 2013.
Removing ‘page_friends_of_fans’ metric
We are removing the metric: ‘page_friends_of_fans’ from the Insights Dashboard and the Insights API.
Removing the ability to “Select All” or “Pre-Select” for Requests
As part of our efforts to improve user sentiment, we have updated our platform policy so that apps may not offer a select all option or pre-select multiple recipients to receive requests. Other Request dialog functionality will remain the same.
On a final note, 30 bugs were fixed in the last week, and 34 were accepted for further review. Check out the blog post for the full list of fixes.
