I’ve revamped the way permissions are requested, so as to store the session key Facebook provides when the user grants “offline access” permission. This enables WPBook to import comments from either the user’s Facebook Wall or the Wall of a Facebook Fan Page.

I’ve also added the ability to change the attribution line (the little blurb WPBook attaches to each message when you post it).

Given the complexity of all the different ways one might configure the application, though, I feel a need to get some folks testing it before making it the ‘default’ new release.

If you’re testing it, please do let me know – either via comments here, in the wpbook support forum, or via the contact form.

NOTE: This version has debugging on by default, which means it will create a debug text file in your wpbook plugin directory – this can be disabled by editing wpbook_cron.php at line 37, changing:

define ('DEBUG', true);

to

define ('DEBUG', false);

But there is useful info in that debug file for trying things out.

You’ll also probably find, in testing, that you’ll need a plugin like Core Control which lets you see what cron jobs are running and run specific jobs ahead of schedule.

Thanks

John

Test Boxes, photo by David Bleasdale, cc-by license

I’ve just tagged version 2.0.0 of WPBook for release, but haven’t yet changed the “stable” tag in the readme.

What that means is that if you’re using WPBook, you won’t seen any automated notification of a newer version being available. You’ll have to go to the WPBook download page and find 2.0.0 at the top of the “other versions” list.

Please do so, especially if you are willing to help test the new features.

What is there to test? Most importantly, a new feature which imports comments made by users on your Facebook wall (or the wall of a Facebook page) in response to excerpts posted by WPBook on those pages.

In other words, if you have “publish to Facebook Stream” enabled and working for your personal wall and/or the wall of a Fan Page, when you publish a new blog post, and that post gets published to the FB wall, and users make comments on that wall post, those same comments will get imported to your WordPress hosted blog.

A few notes:

• You’ve got to have stream publishing working in order for importing to work. For the last few versions, I’ve had the app request “stream_read” permissions as well as “stream_publish” – so it should have the right permissions. If it doesn’t, visit the “click here to grant permissions” page from the WPBook settings and try regranting them – it can’t hurt and it might help.
• Comment importing relies on wp_cron, WordPress’s built in pseudo-cron system, which basically lets timed events happen in the background. (It’s the same thing that makes scheduled posts work). In order to get WPBook’s necessary hooks added to wp_cron, you will need to deactivate and then reactivate the plugin.
• In case you weren’t listening above, you will need to deactivate and then reactivate the plugin for commenting importing to work. Comment importing is a task which fires off hourly, so don’t expect any comments for the first hour or two.
• Comment importing will only work for new posts, or more accurately, posts published to your Facebook wall AFTER installing 2.x. Posts you had previously posted to your Facebook wall will not have their comments imported.
• Comment importing also only works for posts published within the last 7 days (user configurable). Basically this is a potentially taxing operation, and it’s my experience that most comments on a Facebook wall are made within the first 24 or 48 hours of a post being made, so there isn’t much point in going back longer than 7 days.
• You can configure (in the expected places in WPBook settings) whether comments imported from Facebook should be automatically approved, and what email address should be affiliated with them. (This is different than comments made inside the Facebook Application version of your blog, where users can input their email adress. The comment form for wall posts doesn’t allow for email, and doesn’t grant the application permission to pull the users email). This is so that you can set a gravatar to be used for imported posts (just set the email address to one you control, then set a gravatar for that email address).
• There is a debug mode, enabled by changing define ('DEBUG', false); to define ('DEBUG', true); at line 37 of wpbook_cron.php. (If you’re not comfortable changing this, perhaps you shouldn’t beta test plugins.) This will create a wpbook_debug.txt file inside the plugin’s directory which captures information about every time cron runs.

Additionally, this version also includes the often requested “Promote External links” option – if checked, this will cause WPBook to use your external (WordPress) permalinks for new posts, both in the “Recent Posts” box in your profile and also in the Wall notifications, so users are sent to your WordPress blog, not to the Facebook Application view of your blog. In essence this lets you use WPBook without ever expecting users to go to your Facebook Application, which is now just used as a mechanism for connecting WordPress to Facebook for the publishing of new posts and the importing of comments.

If you are testing it, please let me know by commenting here or posting in the support forums for WPBook and thanks in advance!

Skyfire’s a new gecko-based browser for Windows Mobile and Symbian phones, and if you’ve got a Windows Mobile based phone, you’ll want to request access to the beta ASAP (the beta program requires a US phone number, unfortunately). It’s not quite ready for prime time, but it is definitely something to track as it moves toward 1.0.

Here are some screen shots of Skyfire in action:

Splash Screen as Skyfire Beta Loads

Optaros.com in full screen view. Note that the flash carousel of images works just as on desktop browser

Zoomed in to enter username and pass in login page

Viewing Flash Video from YouTube

You can get more detailed discussion (and more screenshots on what looks to be a larger screen device) in the recent Ars Technica review, which ultimately concludes:

Although SkyFire has a long way to go before we can determine if Oberhofer really has it right, the concept deserves attention. SkyFire is relatively strong considering the short amount of time that it has been under development, but it can’t really compete with Opera Mobile 9.5 on Windows Mobile devices yet. SkyFire has a decisive advantage for users who want to watch Flash video, but for practically everything else, it’s still more of a proof-of-concept than a fully-functional web browser. We will be sure to give it a second look when it exits beta.

I haven’t yet found Skyfire replacing the phone’s built in Pocket IE for day to day browsing, but I think it easily could once it hits 1.0.