What's the difference between a Facebook app and a tab?
I want to add a link to my Facebook page that will open new information within my page. Not a website, but information from a scoring program my bowlers use. I'm not a programmer by any means and have no programmer on staff I am trying to teach myself these things as I go along.
First of all, I have no idea if what I want to add is called a "tab" or an "app." I can't really seem to find a good explanation as to what the difference is. They both kind of sound the same to me. I've tried to figure out how to add both and have found a lot of great websites and information on Facebook that kind of leads you through the process.
The problem is all of them seem to expect me to already know what things like, JavaScript, canvas urls, FBML, etc... and I don't. So I'm getting tripped up on the steps even as I'm trying to work my way through the steps. I guess I'm kind of looking for a page entitled something like "Facebook developing for ignorant people."
I really appreciate any help you can give me.
Please forgive my ignorance here but I have searched and searched for how to do this and just keep coming up against a wall.
Answer
What are Facebook Tabs?
The tabbed structure multiplies your possibilities. Tabs help keep Pages organized so people know where to go to get different pieces of information. The Wall tab is for dynamic content, the Info tab has static information, the Photos tab contains photos albums and Fan photos, etc
What are Facebook Apps?
Apps on Facebook are web apps that are loaded in the context of Facebook in what we refer to as a Canvas Page.
What is a Canvas Page?
A Canvas Page is quite literally a blank canvas within Facebook on which to run your app.
Now where you may have been confused is that you have ability for your app to be used within the context of a Facebook Page via a tab. So it is a custom tab
So now to what you want
I want to add a link to my Facebook page that will open new information within my page.
You want to add a new piece of information to the page. Is it static content. If it is just the rules of the scoring program, then you can use a Tab. Previously one was able to accomplish this using a simple FBML tab. Put Facebook has phased this out.
FBML will no longer be supported as of January 1, 2012
Two quick ways to deal with your problem
Use the Info tab description to place the information
Search for apps that offer this functionality for example TabPress
The longer way (long term) would be to follow this guide and bite the bullet for learning web hosting and development
http://developers.facebook.com/docs/appsonfacebook/pagetabs/
Any more information in terms of languages, and steps depends on exactly what you would like to do. I am not really sure what you mean by showing the bowling information. For the moment I am thinking it is just static information. So all you need to know is how to use the following HTML tags
- html
- head
- body
- p