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By 23 August 2010 | Categories: news

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Users of the Facebook Pages feature will see some changes being implemented on the site from today as Facebook changes some layout options on the template.

Facebook Pages are portals offered by the social network to promote a certain product or group such as a band or restaurant (or TechSmart's Page), but can be extended to almost anything.

Those users who own Facebook Pages will have seen an announcement at the top of their page stating the imminent changes as it was recently announced in the Facebook Developer’s Blog.

Among the changes being implemented is the removal of the Boxes tab and the resizing of all custom tabs to 520 pixels. Users who own Facebook pages will have a chance to adjust their old layout beforehand, but after today all pages will be resized automatically.

“We announced plan last October to remove application boxes and application info sections as well as reduce the width of application tabs to optimize for the new profile and Facebook Pages format,” the company explained in its Developers blog.

So how will this affect the average Facebook user? Well, the idea is that Facebook Pages will be simpler to navigate and work more effectively using the new layout. The real users it will affect is those who manage custom pages. For example, users that added custom tabs to their pages using Facebook Markup Language (FBML), will need to ensure that their content doesn’t exceed the new 520 pixel width requirements.

The developer’s blog also noted that IFrames will become the new standard for canvas applications and Page tabs instead of FBML. Developers who are in the process of building canvas applications for their pages should switch over to IFrames as soon as possible as Facebook will no longer support new FBML applications from the end of the year. The IFrames functionality will be implemented sometime during the next few months.

Another interesting announcement made by Facebook is that the company is in the process of making its platform easily accessible across multiple devices, tying together web and mobile services. Platform technologies are being unified such as OAuth 2.0, the Graph API and the JavaScript SDK to increase integration.

If you are managing a Facebook page and is uncertain how these changes will affect you, click here to have the changes implemented.

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