Reliability of Facebook Applications

We sometimes receive queries from our clients about issues with Facebook applications. Occasionally you might experience styling issues with Facebook apps or the apps simply fail to load.

These issues are generally down to problems with the Facebook API where background requests fail to process which cause apps to temporarily ‘break’. Often these issues only last for a few minutes.

One such issue is that around the caching of stylesheets (CSS) that are used by applications to apply customised styles. These determine what the app looks like on Facebook (CSS is what is used by any website to apply styles). The problem is related to a known Facebook bug that has been lodged against the Facebook platform.

What surprises us is that the bug was raised back in November and we are still experiencing issues with apps we have under development and with our live apps.

So, please be aware that we know about the issue and we are working with the dev teams in Facebook through their Facebook developer forums to resolve the issue.

Conor & John