From Facebook Developer Wiki

This page mentions logging in from the desktop application directly now, but provides no link to information on how this is done.

Please explain.

Direct your browser instance to login.php. I edited the section so hopefully that's clearer. Pete (563683308 17:51, 6 August 2009 (PDT))

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It is mentioned that the session secret need to be stored. Can this storage be handle by a server ? Furthermore, does the session secret and/or session key expire some day ?

Sure, but it's probably better to store the session information on the user's system, along with your application files. Session secret and session key expire after 24 hours or if the user explicitly logs out of your application. Pete (563683308 17:51, 6 August 2009 (PDT))

Then what about using those credentials to launch several parallel sessions ? It is thus possible to keep those credentials in our server and deliver them to any desktop app instance willing to consult the wall of the user that opened the session ? I think it sounds not correct, still possible.

How would you associate one user's session with a different user? Pete (563683308 11:44, 7 August 2009 (PDT))

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Are calls to the API possible from desktop apps without an active session ? Could be usefull for accessing public pages for example.

Check the calls listed in Category:Sessionless_API, but in general, you need an active session to make API calls from a desktop application. Pete (563683308 11:44, 7 August 2009 (PDT))

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It's not very clear how a desktop application is supposed to get the session key back after opening a browser and pointing it to login.php. It almost looks like the documentation is some mashup of desktop and web based application logic. Can you show us the workflow of logging in a desktop application? Thanks.

that's because we use Facebook Connect for authentication, which is a Web-based authentication system, hence the need to launch a browser instance within the application. I've added pointers to WebKit, etc, depending upon your development environment. Pete (563683308 12:04, 24 August 2009 (PDT))

[edit] console applications

Is there any way to make Facebook console applications (without possibility of displaying of web page)? (1429443999)

You still need to do some sort of authentication system to get a user's session, so you'll need a browser instance for that at the very least. Look at Facebook for Adobe AIR, which is a desktop (I presume that's what you mean by console) application and see how it's done. Pete -- 563683308 15:49, 21 October 2009 (PDT)

[edit] Authenticating w/o a browser

How can you authenticate w/o a browser? Can it be done w/ API calls alone?