Get the New PhoneGap Facebook Platform Plugin | August 30th, 2011
Today we’re launching a new PhoneGap Facebook Platform Plugin. With more than 250 million people accessing Facebook on their phone each month, this is sure to be a popular plugin. Here’s the news:
PhoneGap Facebook Platform Plugin Polishes Log In Experience for Mobile Users
Vancouver, BC—August 30, 2011—Nitobi Inc., the creators of the popular PhoneGap mobile app development framework, announce today the launch of the PhoneGap Facebook Platform plugin. The new plugin makes it easy for developers building mobile apps with PhoneGap to simplify the log in process for apps that retrieve and use Facebook data.
The Facebook Platform lets users log in to a web page or mobile app using their Facebook login credentials. An example of a popular website that uses this single sign-on functionality is The New York Times. Users can log in to The New York Times website by using the “Login with Facebook” button, after which the application uses Facebook identity data to verify the user.
Facebook provides a JavaScript software development kit (SDK) that makes it possible for web developers to implement “Login with Facebook”. However, the SDK poses a challenge for PhoneGap developers because the Facebook sign on process uses the OAuth 2.0 standard, which doesn’t always translate gracefully for their apps.
“We got working on a Facebook plugin because we’re user experience advocates,” said Dave Johnson, CTO at Nitobi Inc. “The OAuth authentication workflow for a mobile app isn’t ideal so we created the PhoneGap Facebook plugin as a way to streamline that process and improve the experience for the end user.”
The plugin uses the same application programming interface (API) as Facebook’s JavaScript SDK. But, instead of replicating the workflow users are accustomed to in desktop web browsers it works with the native Facebook application installed on many iOS and Android smartphones. The end result is a more streamlined and graceful log in experience. Plus, it’s easy to implement. Developers wrap their web app in PhoneGap and this plugin, add one line of code, and single sign-on automatically works.
Creating a better user experience was the inspiration for the Facebook plugin, but the PhoneGap community’s enthusiasm for plugins drove the project. “The PhoneGap community is really behind plugins, which is why it was a major focus in the recent PhoneGap 1.0 release. Continuing to improve and expand PhoneGap plugins is a big part of the PhoneGap agenda,” said Brian LeRoux, Senior Vice President of Software Development and Director of Developer Relations at Nitobi, and PhoneGap Evangelist.
You can download the Facebook plugin for a PhoneGap app here.
About Nitobi
Nitobi is the creator of PhoneGap an open source development tool for building fast, easy, cross-platform mobile apps with HTML and JavaScript that take advantage of core features of Apple iOS, Google Android, HP webOS, Nokia Symbian, Samsung Bada and BlackBerry SDKs. The open source code has been downloaded more than 600,000 times and thousands of apps built using PhoneGap are available in mobile app stores and directories.
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