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MyFacebook Gadget Update

A lot of people have been complaining on not being able to login to MyFacebook gadget and I really didn’t know what was going on as I followed Facebook API’s authentication instructions to the letter.

MyFacebook So I’ve decided to change it’s authentication method. It now uses the same authentication method Popfly uses in its Facebook Data source block. To login you’ll have to click on the first page link in order to get an authentication token, then you’ll have to add that token to the gadget settings page.

Note that if this is the first time that you’re using the gadget you’ll also have to authorize it to access your Facebook account. This is an one time only extra step that once completed will redirect you to the token retrieval page but without specifying the required parameter “API_KEY”. This is a Facebook bug and has nothing to do with the gadget so please don’t shoot the messenger. To verify that this is not my fault you can try the Popfly Facebook block which behaves the exact same way. In this case just click the retrieve authentication token again and you’ll be redirected to the right page.

If you later decide that you need to remove (I don’t know why you could decide such a thing ;-)) this application from your Facebook account all you’ll have to do is go to your privacy settings page then click the applications link, then the authorized applications one on the top and finally click the remove MySidebarBook link.

In this release you’ll also find a number of bug fixes and corrections as well. And as the number of people that have downloaded this gadget has increased dramatically I’ve also decided to implement a new update notification service that will notify users of newer versions as those become available in order to keep everyone synced.

Besides that, I’d love to hear your ideas and comments on how to make this gadget better, so if you’ve got the time drop me a line here so that we can talk about it.

Published inGreat SitesUtils I LikeVista GadgetsWeb

41 Comments

  1. I installed this gadget ina bout 30 seconds flat. I was amazed after reading that so many people had problems getting it to work that it worked immediately…..

    ALMOST….

    Although I have set “http://www.facebook.com/statusupdates” in the gadget”s configuration, it is still only saying “Set status feed on gadget settings”

    any suggestions?

  2. Paul Paul

    i”m having trouble with the status too, I put in the RSS URL but I still get the “set status…” message.

  3. David Ornstein David Ornstein

    I got the gadget working. Nice work! A few comments and a request.

    Comment: Regaring the API_KEY issue, I had serious problems with this. When I followed the auth path through facebook it eventually gave me an error saying that I the API_KEY parm hadn”t been specified. I had noticed that there was an API_KEY paramater in the previous URL and decided to see what woul dhappen if I copy and pasted that into the URL for the final page. When I did it I was able to continue and then get a code eventually. That got the gadget working.

    Comment: The two URLs you need to to enter in the gadget settings dialog are not obvious. You hsould tell people that they need to grab the RSS feed URLs (since there are lots of things on the page you send people to).

    Request: I want the gadget to be bigger (at least when undocked). I have my friends status updates showing but they”re pretty much all clipped because they don”t fit.

  4. Thanks David for trying myFacebook sidebar gadget.
    As for your comments
    – Unfortunately this is not something I can fix. Facebook has a bug when redirecting the user from the login page to the AUTH_CODE generation one that omits the API_KEY querystring argument. Same thing happens to Popfly”s Facebook provider implementation. You can overcome this by ether clicking the link again once logged in or put the API_KEY in your self.
    – I”m going to add the word “RSS” to my labels in the settings page in the next version and hope that this will help people. Something tells me though that no matter what I do there”s always going to be someone that won”t be able to find the feed url 😉
    As for your request I had several people requesting the exact opposite, that the gadget is quite large and that they would like a much smaller version of it. Anyway I”ll keep that in mind.

  5. Brian W Brian W

    ok, I have figured out how to get the sidebar working…

    http://www.facebook.com/feeds/friends_status.php?id=XXXXXX&key=XXXXXX&format=rss20

    to get the first XXXXX hover over your profile button… it tells you your ID… and the second XXXX is the generated code

    same thing goes for notifications… hover over your notifications button and it gives you the URL…

    hope this helps everyone… Merry Christmas!!!

    Brian

  6. Let me remind you guys that you can get the feed by right clicking and copying it from the RSS feed icon at the bottom right of the page that opens by clicking on the link provided in the gadget settings page.
    Before you do that though make sure that the feed displays correctly on your browser by clicking on the link. If you still can”t see the feed then something”s wrong with it.
    Let me know if that worked for you Jono.

  7. justin justin

    Is anyone else having a problem where trying to change your status brings up the “facebook login page” and when you login doesn”t acctually change your status?

  8. Hey Justin,
    Allowing a Facebook application to change your status requires additional permitions. So the first time you try to change your status myFacebook gadget will redirect you to facebook where after logging in you”ll have to allow it to change status for you. Once you do that you”ll be able to change your status.
    Thanks for trying myFacebook out…

  9. Mel Mel

    Does MyFacebook app always ask you for a login code everytime you turn your computer on? I thought it is a one time thing.

  10. DR>U DR>U

    I finally got the feed to work….
    On status updates page, find the subscribe to feed
    open page and copy url “http://www.facebook.com/feeds/friends_status.php?id=XXXXXXXXX&key=XXXX&format=rss20″ where the x”s a your specific ID not XXXXXXXX, workd for me
    JUST COPY URL FROM SUBSCRIPTUIB PAGE

  11. Sandy_Bee Sandy_Bee

    I also have the problem with the Token/Key.

    Everytime I restart my computer I have to go through the whole one time pass-key thing. Once entered it works perfectly, but haviung to do it everytime is a real pain.

    Is there any solution to this?

  12. I can understand all of you complaining for having to login everytime you start your computer but I”ve made a decision when building the gadget not to store any user information on the PC for security reasons and I”m still not convinced that there is a real need for it.
    I mean we have to login to various services or even windows when we start our pcs don”t we? What”s more, imagine having a gadget that auto-logs you into Facebook and someone else starts your PC. Of course you wouldn”t want him to access all your private information, would you?

  13. ramps ramps

    I understand you not wanting to save personal info, but tbh it”s a real pain to have to get the code every time you restart. Would it be possible to give the option to store the one time code if the user wanted? It takes too long to get the code and is the only thing that spoils the ap for me.

  14. The fact the app would login on startup should present no problems at all – since a password is required to login to windows, only authorised people will use the app anyway!

    The app doesn”t seem to lose it”s configuration settings, the previous key is even still there – why do you need to get another key – can”t the old one be kept alive? What changes?

  15. Also – in a future version, it might be nice to have the option of scrolling the notifications RSS rather than the friend status RSS – that is actually what I”m doing now anyway, it just says “Friends Status” above the feed! – but I think it”s much more useful and cooler to have Today”s notifications scrolling through rather than friend”s statuses.

    =)

    Also some of the links make the app hang and sidebar crash: “friends”, “notifications”, the three icons on the right..

    Fantastic app though – really great work, *so* useful! Please continue!

  16. It seems that not having to login when you start your PC is pretty important to everyone…

    So (listening to you) in the next version (comming out in a few days) you will have to login just once and after that your session will be persisted even when you shut down your PC.

    As for the problems regarding the gadget crashes mentioned earlier, these are not actually crashes. When you have a large number of Data comming down from Facebook the gadget may seem unresponsive but it”s actually working, downloading and rendering data. You will have to wait a while (how much depends on the size of your data e.g. number of friends, groups etc.) to get the results and then render them.

    Unfortunatelly the Facebook API doesn”t support paging thus all the data have to be downloaded when you issue a request. So there is not much I can do with the downlloading part but I can render only a portion of the data, thus saving some time from the rendering.

    Would a filtering option to say present the first 10 make sence to you?

  17. Hey! Ah that”s fantastic stuff – look forward to the release! Oh – I see now, that makes more sense =) Yes, I think limiting the data to the first 10 or so would be sensible, (I have over 550 friends, 50 groups, 50 albums etc.) since the app will hang for less time and nobody needs to see the full data – you could have a link at the bottom which opens a window to see the rest if they like – that”s initially what I expected when I clicked those icons anyway!

    Nice work – thanks for your response!

  18. bethany bethany

    I got everything working except updating my own status from the gadget. i use mozilla, on vista, and while I read that it takes a permission setting the first time around, I can”t get to/see that. It opens IE and i get a blank page. any further info? It”s the one part of the gadget I really wanted :(.
    thanks, bethany

  19. Sorry for that, I will look into it.
    Till then you can manually authorize the application so you can use the gadget by visiting this url.
    Hope this helps.

  20. bethany bethany

    thanks!!! worked instantly 🙂

  21. Gil Gil

    In order to find the URL for your status feed, go to your status page in Facebook and then select View >> Pagesource in your browser. You will find the URL in this code (do a search (CTRL + F) for the letters RSS)

    The format is http://www.new.facebook.com/…/friends_status.php

  22. Stacy Buglione Stacy Buglione

    I love your gadget. Is there any way to get online friend status?

  23. Ray Ray

    Love your gadget and have been using it for a long time. The other day I was advised in the gadget that an update was available which I downloaded and installed. Now unfortunately I only have 1 “Friends Status” being displayed and no new one are appearing! Any thoughts?

  24. As it turns out mySidebar gadget had a bug (that”s what happens when you write code at 3.00AM) which I fixed and I”ve already released a new version that resolves this issue. It”s going to be available as soon as gallery.live.com approves it.
    Sorry for that, and thanks everyone for letting me know.

  25. J J

    how do you add url in notifications

  26. Rick James Rick James

    I mistakenly removed this application permission from Facebook (didn”t recognize the name). Now after re-installing the desktop gadget and clicking the “Click here to generate a one-time Facebook code” link in the gadget, Facebook tells me “An Error occurred with mySdebarBook. Please try again later.” It has been doing this for a week. Any ideas?

  27. Hey Rick,
    I tried it my self today, removed everything from my computer deleted my Facebook permissions and re-installed mySidebarBook, clicked on the generate code got persmission and everything works fine. So I”m guessing something else is causing your problem.

  28. CodeMonkey CodeMonkey

    I”ve tried installing this on several computers running Windows 7 and I can”t get it to work at all.

    I”ve added http://login.facebook.com and http://www.facebook.com in the Trusted Sites on IE8 but whenever I click on the “Click here to generate a one-time Facebook code” link on the MyFacebook Gadget it displays a Facebook page that says “An error occurred with mySidebarBook. Please try again later.”

    Is there a list of instructions on how to get this gadget to work?

  29. jansen jansen

    An error occurred with mySidebarBook. Please try again later.

    -this error shows everytime I try to get the 6 letter code… please help pe

  30. laszlo dobos laszlo dobos

    I have been trying to log into facebook.Please pelp me sir!Thank you1

  31. ROBERT ROBERT

    HI I CAN/T GET ON FACEBOOK LOST ID AND PASSWORD NEED HELP THANKS BOB

  32. jstmars jstmars

    I can”t get past the "Invalid API Key" problem in order to authenticate the gadget.

  33. jstmars jstmars

    I can”t get past the "Invalid API Key" problem in order to authenticate the gadget so I downloaded and installed the new FB EXPORER gadget and it works just fine.

  34. DonD DonD

    I can”t get this gadget working at all…How do I authorize Facebook to accept the gadget???

  35. ryan mullen ryan mullen

    i can”t figure out how to add the code please email me and tell me how i tried to check out the popfly website and i says its for sale i”m so lost when click generate code it takes me to a facebook page the says invalid api code specified and when i click on authorize the gadget to do so it takes me to facebook page that says the link may be broken or the page may have been removed

  36. After loggin in to my facebook account and clickin on the gadgets URL, I get the following error message: The redirect_uri URL must be absolute. What does this mean?

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