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Simple Productivity Tip For Facebook Developers

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I’ve been doing quite a lot of Facebook development in the last few months. At first I was using my own account to do most of the testings for the apps I was working on. I always have (at least) two versions of the app – production and development. The development version is marked as sandboxed, so any action I do in it (including posting to the newsfeed) isn’t shown to my friends.

At first I felt that this is enough, and didn’t feel the need for a test account. But after some time I realized that while developing, anytime I get to my profile or newsfeed, I get distracted by my friends’ posts. So I started using another account to do the testings. This way, whenever I get to the profile or newsfeed I practically see nothing there that can distract me from what I’m working on.

Another benefit of using a test account is that whenever you test something on the production (un-sandboxed) version of your app and need publish a lot to your newsfeed, you don’t spam your friends (or reveal upcoming features).

Of course, we can rely on our self discipline to avoid this distractions, but who are we kidding? :)

Arik

Written by Arik

November 28th, 2009 at 4:58 pm

Posted in Web Development

Tagged with , , , , ,

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  • Rodik
    Hey Arik,

    Thanks for the tips, I too have found that using a test account is useful.

    but i have a couple of questions (and i know you're probably the best person to ask).

    1. Facebook has a policy for test accounts:
    http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Test_Accounts
    And still this method seems somewhat lacking and confining.
    I, for one, do use a simple test account (as in, registered as a real account). What is your take on this? do you register it as a test account, or just as a normal user?

    2. As for having 2 versions of the application (development and production), do you simply register them as two different applications?
  • 1. I tried using such test account when they first released it. It's a nice concept, but poor implementation. The most annoying thing is that test users are isolated from the rest of Facebook, so it's hard to test social graph related stuff. Besides that, if I'm not mistaken, test accounts can't be listed as developers, so you can't test sandboxed apps with them.

    So yes - I'm using real accounts too.

    2. Yes. Sometimes I even register more (development, staging, production). They don't seem to care.
  • Rodik
    Thanks, those are excellent tips!

    (now if only you could drop a few tips about your unmatched virality skills... *wink wink*, *nudge nudge*)
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