New Design Feed Wall
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[edit] Combined Feed and Wall
The Mini-Feed and Wall are now combined into a single flow to encourage the idea that the profile is a place for all of a user’s content and activity. The profile is about a user, not just content created by the user. Users can filter Wall stories from Mini-Feed stories or filter Mini-Feed stories from Wall stories. A separate Wall also exists as a quick way to drill down to text posts other people have written. Users can post content to their own Feed or friends’ Feeds using the Publisher to post anything from text to music to other rich content. Posting on the Wall supports text only.
[edit] Multiple Sizes for Feed Stories
In order to place greater emphasis on Feed, we’ve made a few significant changes. Feed stories now come in different sizes, and users can change the size of each story as he sees fit as long as there is a template for the story in that size. Users can create their own content, and then publish it directly into their own Feeds. When user publishes something into their own Feed, this gets picked up in one or more of their friends’ News Feeds as well. These different sizes will enable applications to have significantly more opportunities to create rich content – such as sharing a song and being able to play it from within the feed.
As part of the profile redesign effort, we’re changing the manner in which applications publish Feed stories. Previously, applications used feed.publishTemplatizedAction to specify—among other things—templates for one line and short stories, and the data that should be used to fill out the template to create a Feed story.
The redesigned profile still includes the Mini-Feed, but Mini-Feed stories will now be rendered in one line, short, or full sizes. One line stories get their point across in a single line. Short stories are formatted with templates and allow a small amount of text with media – for example up to four images or a SWF file. Full stories will use pre-formatted FBML (like Wall attachments currently) and can be up to to 700 pixels in height. The profile owner can change the size of stories, toggling between the three sizes so she has complete control over the presentation of her Mini-Feed.
The one line and short presentations will look very much like they always have. Full stories are an application’s opportunity to provide rich, meaningful content, encouraging users to elect the full story presentation to make for a more interesting Mini-Feed.
Instead of posting the one line, short, and full story templates with every single publish action, you will now register a template bundle ahead of time. Facebook returns a template bundle ID, which you reference every time the application publishes a story of that type. You must register templates of the appropriate size in order to publish stories of that size.
[edit] Feed Story Behavior
Applications can automatically publish one line stories -- without user approval -- in the owner's Mini-Feed and the owner's friends' News Feed. Applications can publish short stories with user approval in the owner's Mini-Feed as well as the owner's friends' Mini-Feed and News Feed. Users can choose to publish in up to 5 friends' Mini-Feeds, at a time, and applications can pre-fill one friend automatically.
Applications can automatically publish short stories without user approval in the owner's Mini-Feed under certain conditions.
Applications can publish full stories generated by the Publisher, when the story is in a Feed story form. If user approves a full story, it does not mean the user approves short stories.
[edit] One Line Stories
One line stories are rendered as single line stories with a width of 500 pixels. They always require templates. Facebook will attempt to aggregate similar stories into a single story whenever possible. At the moment, Facebook aggregates {actor} and {target} data whenever possible, and developers can make use of the fb:if-multiple-actors tag to ensure actor-verb agreement.
The only HTML and FBML tags Facebook supports for one line story templates are <a>, <fb:name>, <fb:pronoun>, and <fb:if-multiple-actors>.
For example:
- {actor} went to see {movie} and <fb:if-multiple-actors>they all<fb:else><fb:pronoun uid="actor" useyou="false"/></fb:else></fb:if-multiple-actors> {past-tense-verb} it.
- {actor} challenged {target} to a game of chess.
- {actor} bought {gift} for {target}.
Every story published requires a one line story version to be included.
[edit] Short Stories
Short stories also require templates. Facebook will attempt to aggregate similar short stories as well. The only HTML and FBML tags Facebook supports for short story templates are fb:userlink, fb:name, fb:pronoun, fb:if-multiple-actors, <a>, <b>, and <i>. Short stories will be rendered using one of a number (approximately 5-10) of Facebook-managed layouts. Developers can specify which layout they prefer, or Facebook can decide which layout to use based on the supplied content.
Short stories are large enough that you can specify both a title template and a body template. You do not have to include a short story when you publish a story.
[edit] Full Stories
Like short stories, full stories require templates, but Facebook won’t attempt to aggregate them. Full story templates are expressed as arbitrary FBML documents, which will be rendered in a space that is 500 pixels wide and up to 700 pixels high, using an FBML flavor similar to that used to render Wall attachments. Everything that applies to one line and short stories also applies here, although there are many more FBML tags.
[edit] Feed Story Template API Calls
For more information about the new API methods for creating Feed story templates, see Registering Templates: New API Methods.
