The new facebook method for creating custom tabs has a serious flaw: Users who have their account settings set to force fb to use SSL get errors when the iframed page is not using an https site (and most are not). This is noticeable in Chrome and Safari. Here is the problem…
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had his own account hacked into, so they added an option in the account setting that lets users use Facebook using SSL (secure sockets layer), which can be visually detected with the https prefix instead of http.
On March 11, Facebook depricated the use of FBML (Facebook Markup Language) and began using iframes. This makes it more difficult for your average Facebook user to setup a custom tab on their business page, as there are more steps involved. But now you can do anything on your custom tab that you want. Because the page actually resides elsewhere, you can use Flash, videos, and any type of database programming desired. This is a real plus for business pages. But…
If the user has set up his security setting as shown above, they may get an error like this:
This seems to be the case when using Safari as a browser as well. Or, the page simply may not display (when using Firefox). The reason is that Facebook is using a SSL connection, but the iframed page is not. If your external page is also using a SSL connection, the framed content appears correctly. Of course, hardly any external pages are set up to use SSL, so your Facebook visitors only see an error, and think you are incompetent.
Users who do not have their Facebook setting to use SSL, and visit a tab that does use SSL, appear to be OK (although I’d like feedback on that). So the work-around is to use SSL for any custom designed tab. Facebook needs to resolve this issue, but until they do, set-up your custom tabs on a secure server. If you don’t have a secure server, there is not a solution.
WebStores Ltd builds custom Facebook fan pages as one of its services, including the ability to display different content to users who have “Liked” your page versus those have not. Visit www.WebStoresLtd.com or call toll free 877-924-1414 for more information.
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