Tab Application

See Flirt with 3 Quizzes tab.

In order to make it easier to read, navigate, and communicate on users’ profiles, profiles are organized into a series of tabs.

Users and Page admins can add application-specific tabs, so they can feature their favorite applications and personalize their profiles and Pages.

Read all about Tabbed Profiles from the developer WIKI.

Summary of a few points below:

• By default for user profiles, there are four tabs: Wall, Info, Photos, and Boxes;
• For Facebook Pages, there are three tabs by default: Wall, Info, and Boxes (Boxes to be depreciated)
• Users and Page admins cannot delete these tabs
• Users and Page admins can add new tabs to feature applications they want to highlight on their profiles and Pages
• Each tab can feature one application, and each application can only have one tab
• An application tab is 760 pixels wide. You can make your canvas pages as wide as an application tab if you want. Note application tabs will be 520 pixels wide in early 2010
• You register an application tab on Facebook by specifying a tab URL in your application settings. This is a URL relative to your application’s canvas page
• Once a tab URL is registered, the application appears in the plus (+) menu for adding a tab as soon as a user accepts your application’s Terms of Service.
• The UID of the tab owner is provided to your application with the fb_sig_profile_user parameter.
• A session key is sent with the fb_sig_profile_session_key parameter.
• For more information about which parameters are sent to your application, see Authorizing Applications.
• Application tabs are slightly different than canvas pages.
• When a user first goes to a tab, it is in passive mode. This means applications cannot autoplay Flash or onload JavaScript. Once user interacts with the tab – like clicking the Flash object, the page becomes active, so it can play Flash, execute JavaScript, and so forth.
• For the best user experience, use a requirelogin link instead of redirecting back to the login page. Use "requirelogin=true" in an <a> tag or any other tag.

Application tabs behave like a hybrid of a canvas page and a profile box. A tab has the following properties:

• It fetches data from its application servers.
• It can load AJAX.
• It doesn’t know who the viewing user is when the user first visits the tab. Facebook sends the fb_sig_user and fb_sig_profile_user parameters, both containing the profile owner’s user ID.
• If a viewing user interacts with the tab (like submits a form, takes an action that causes an AJAX load of new content, or follows a relative URL that loads on the tab), that user’s UID is sent to the application as the fb_sig_user parameter, the profile owner’s user ID is sent as the fb_sig_profile_user parameter. The viewing user’s session key is key is sent only if the user authorized the application.
• Applications use the owner’s session key on the owner’s application tabs.
• If a user is viewing another user’s application tab, and has not authorized the application, the application is granted a read-only session so Facebook can fetch the tab information and generate the page. Because it’s read-only, the application cannot post Feed stories for viewing the tab, and can’t modify any data for the user who owns the tab.
• Applications cannot autoplay Flash.
• Applications cannot onload JavaScript.
• Applications cannot use iframes on tabs.
• Application tabs cannot contain advertising of any kind.
• Absolute URLs on a tab take the user to your application’s canvas page.
• Relative URLs are treated as if they are relative to your home canvas page and AJAX-loads in the tab.

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