Creating Facebook fan page apps, no matter your skill level, can be a daunting task. There are many tutorials out there about how to create a Facebook app, but quite honestly, if you are not a programmer, you will more than likely be left in the dark. Plus, not to mention, the time and effort required to design and create the Facebook app, and integrate it into the Facebook developer platform is a not so easy task. This is when services like FBiframes can really come in handy.
FBiframes handles all the heavy lifting (programming, hosting, facebook integration, etc) while you can simply focus on the app itself and making it look good. As a designer, I understand the desire to have complete control over the design of an app. There is a bit of hesitation with using a service to create our Facebook apps simply because we might not be allowed the creative freedoms that we so desire. Luckily, FBiframes’ Do-It-Yourself (DIY) apps give us designers the creative control that we are looking for.
FBiframes offers many different DIY apps at many different skill levels so you will not feel hindered by your abilities (or lack thereof). Here are a few DIY apps by FBiframes worth mentioning:
About Us App (beginner)
Creating brand awareness is one of the main goals of any fan page – letting your visitors know who you are and what you are about. Unfortunately, there is nowhere to put this on the timeline page and the Facebook “About Us” page is very dull and boring. The FBiframes About Us app offers an easy way to add this vital information to your Facebook fan page.
The About Us app offers 3 flexible templates to choose from to suite your particular needs. Now I admit, for us designers, the idea of using pre-built templates, at first, is a bit of a turn off. However, this app offers a good amount of design flexibility while keeping the details and complicated particulars out of sight and out of mind.
Another key features is an intuitive publishing interface (no HTML/programming knowledge required) that makes it easy to design, preview and publish your About Us fan page app.
HTML Editor App (intermediate)
If you have experience with WYSIWYG editors, this is the APP for you. It allows the designer full creative freedom within the editor interface. Within the visual editor, you are able to easily add images, video and text. The formatting options then allow you to edit content settings such as position, size, weight, and color. Also, I was impressed with the capability to easily add functional UI components to your app as well. Some of these components include buttons, tool tips, content boxes with icons, toggle boxes for collapsible content, image slideshows, tabbed content areas, and more. The flexibility you have within the editor is really quite impressive. If you have experience with HTML coding, you can easily switch from the Visual editor to the HTML editor to edit the HTML code to your heart’s content.
Embed App (advanced)
The FBiframes Embed app is the ultimate in creative control. Mainly it is great for advanced users that already have their page designed and simply want to easily display it as an app on their Facebook fan page. The Embed app obviously offers designers complete control because the page is completely designed and created from scratch and is therefore limited only by your own imagination.
The great thing about this app is you can control everything from design to function, but still have an easy means by which to publish to Facebook. Not to mention easily manage and organize the app within your FBiframes admin dashboard.
