Integration of Facebook Connect With ASP.NET MVC
Posted by Ahmad Barirani in 
If you are a Facebook Application developer working classical ASP.NET, you are probably familiar with the Facebook Developer Toolkit. This tool comes with a great set of server side controls that ease a lot of the developer’s job. But if you are like me and that you want to enjoy ASP.NET MVC, then you cannot use those server side controls that easily, so MVC Addon project might be of great help. The MVC Addon will help overcome differences in the rendering and resource requesting differences between classical ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC.
But when it comes to integrating Facebook Connect with ASP.NET MVC, a few things need to be changed from steps explained in classical ASP.NET tutorials. This article is about overcoming those difficulties. So lets get started.
First, you will need to add the following code to your Site.Master file:
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:fb="http://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml"> <script src="http://static.ak.connect.facebook.com/js/api_lib/v0.4/FeatureLoader.js.php" type="text/javascript"> </script> <script src="/Scripts/fbconnect.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> FB.init("YOU_API_KEY", "xd_receiver"); </script>
Then, you should create a new controller called ‘xd_receiver’ and add the following code to its Index View (which should not derive from the master page):
<%@ Page Language="C#" Inherits="System.Web.Mvc.ViewPage" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" > <head> <title>Cross-Domain Receiver Page</title> </head> <body> <script src="http://static.ak.facebook.com/js/api_lib/v0.4/XdCommReceiver.js?v2" type="text/javascript"></script> </body> </html>
Finally, you should add the following code to render the Facebook Connect login button:
<fb:login-button onlogin="facebook_onlogin_ready();"></fb:login-button>We’re done! When the user clicks on the Facebook Connect button, the Facebook login window pops up. After the user has entered the login information, the pop up closes and your website’s browser window will refresh. From here you can start reading the cookie for the user information and other stuff.
20 Must Haves For All Websites
Project after project, certain things seem to be coming over and over again. We can say that they are standards and become must haves for all websites. Some of them are little things but they make a big difference and give a professional look to the website.
- Usable interface: this is different from a good looking design. The aim here is to provide the service in a simple yet optimal way. Every little detail must be thought of when this is done. The goal is to 1) provide much information with little effort from user 2) answer needs with as little functions and clicks as possible.
- Navigation bars: primary above the fold and repeat in the footer. It is part of a usable interface. It is often useful to go from one section to another or to come back to our initial footsteps.
- Good visual design: this is about having an appealing look, but also one that fits with the service. For example, the best looking design for a e-commerce would be useless if we’re building a social networking website.
- Separate CSS from content: this is a big helper if its done at the beginning of the project. Designs need to be updated and it is much easier and cheaper (later) to have separate files for content and design.
- ‘Contact US’ page: Often overlooked, but a big irritation for the user when it has to look for contact information and not be able to find it.
- Privacy policy: this is common good behavior and is a big issue for consumers. Every website should let its users know how information is collected about them.
- Copyright notice: nobody want to innovate for free. If copyright notice is not there, it night indicate that there is little creative effort behind the website.
- FAQ: this is a great way to answer common questions related to a website and is always very useful. The easiest way to start with the FAQ is note questions and answers from the first people who see the website.
- Subscribe: don’t be cheap and have RSS feeds, newsletters, etc. You must feed your users with information.
- ‘About Us’ page: Let people know what the website is there for. Also a good place to present the team behind the service.
- Digital Assets: Videos, pics, podcasts. All these are trademarks of modern professional websites.
- Blog: This is great way to provide news and updates to your users. It has to be thought of a parallel service to you main service. The more information you will offer about your service, the more it will be adopted. Also, it is a great way to be in touch with your customers.
- Feedback script: There are a couple of good scripts for user feedback. It is a great tool and it is highly adopted by new websites.
- Search: Always good to have this and avoid a lot of headache when it comes to looking around a dynamic website. A lot of great tools are available to ease the job.
- Meaningful content: this tip might look like a waste of time, but people often forget to provide meaningful text. It is as if we often think of design as being more important that content. Don’t forget that ‘content is king’.
- Search engine optimized content: This one must be done in concert with previous tip. When content is created, it must be done with the search engine in mind. There is much art to be used here to not alter the literary quality of the content.
- Sitemap: helps website crawling a lot. This is in line with search engine optimization.
- Social bookmarking links: social media optimization is now part of every marketing campaign.
- Cross browser compatibility: Not everyone is using IE anymore. Sometimes, people use older browser like IE 6. Lets get visitors come back by being compatible with their browser of choice.
- Web analytics: building a site is about incremental improvements. Web analytics help invest your improvement effort in the right direction by showing how people use your website.
Social Media Optimization Now
Social Media Optimization Now is a blog interested in all aspects related to social media optimization. This blog is build with WordPress content management system (CMS) and features custom Theme and Plugins for social media and Google Analytics integration as well as search engine optimization.
TweetMeme Going for Tweet Ranking Business
Fav.or.it announced today that they will focus their resources on TweetMeme, a tweet ranking service based on the number of retweets. By doing so, they join repeets.com, dailyrt.com and upruf.com.
Ranking tweets based on the times they have been tweeted is an interesting concept and complementary to the real-time nature of Twitter.com. Offering such services is aligned with the idea that of social media is a form of ant colony: trends can be shown by their reception from the community and in a more natural way than the immediacy-priority nature of Twitter.com. Offering the feature of searching time spans such as showing trends for today, this month, etc. is a great way of customizing the definition of “right now”.
One note should be added here: upruf.com distinguishes itself from other services named above in that it does not pull but push data on Twitter.com. Since Upruf is based on the concept of knowledge sharing, it needs more space that the 140 characters allowed per tweet. Twitter.com platform is used as a mean of communicating ideas to followers and the whole Twitter community.
Upruf
Upruf.com (pronounced ‘you proof’) is a micro-blogging service built for people to share knowledge. Built on top of Twitter.com API, upruf.com will show messages that receive most votes with priority over other messages. As a result, people who visit the website, will be exposed to messages that are most acknowledged and thus important to the community. The user interface is built with the idea of easing navigation between related messages for a unique knowledge immersion user experience. Having an extra restriction of not linking to outside websites, upruf.com offers the guarantee of less spam and more genuine exchanges among community members.
Smartphones to Challenge Windows Domination
When it come to desktops, Microsoft has a dominant position in the operating system market. Two reasons are behind this situation:
- The lack of hardware support from manufacturer for other operating systems
- The lack of software applications for other operating systems
So even if open source geeks can make Linux for cheaper, nobody would go for it because of these two reasons.
But today, the PC is no longer the only platform for computation. Smartphones are having tremendous adoption on the market with the iPohne and the BlackBerry as the two main products. Since these devices come as a whole system with integrated operating system, the problem with hardware support is no longer an issue. Also, application developers take advantage of this new market opportunity and offer a wide range of products that cover pretty much every need that was fulfilled on the PC.
If PC sales drop compared to Smartphones, then it means a big loss for Microsoft. Will it be able to force its main product to this new market reality?
Marketing Myopia Helps Entrepreneurship
Marketing myopia is thought of something that causes big players to miss opportunities. In a certain way, it is friction against incumbent players’ capacity to innovate. While it is a plague for the incumbent, I believe that the incumbent’s marketing myopia is a blessing for the entrepreneur.
The main reason, I believe, is that incumbents have a strength that could be fatal to the start-up if the latter is in competition with the former. This strength is in the incumbent ease of access to resources. It is widely known that lack of resources is a major issue for start-ups. This is the case because all start-ups have an initial phase of product development. This phase is marked with low sales, low income and thus means less access to resources.
What is saving the entrepreneur is marketing myopia. It is because of the fact that a big player is not willing or does not see an opportunity that a start-up can build up a product or service with less resources that the big player. It is because of this handicap that incumbents do not eat all market shares and that others can fill the gap.