The guys at Facebook recently had their f8 meet in San Francisco where several changes to the platform were unveiled. And what big changes they were! No more Facebook Connect? Some new concept called Open Graph? What will happen to TiR then?

Luckily, while Facebook does make such arbitrary changes to the platform that would piss off most developers, they are also nice enough to continue supporting the old stuff. So the Facebook Connect parts of TiR still functioned smoothly... BUT... knowing that there is something newer (and perhaps better) out there meant I could not ignore it. So although I had just about figured out Facebook Connect (made a whole lot tougher by the often patchy and scattered documentation), I had to start figuring out the new Open Graph stuff (with equally annoying documentation). Let's just say I invented a few new cuss words starting with f to rival the most overused one.

I'm still in the process of understanding the Open Graph Protocol and its associated API, but you may have noticed one new feature on the site already - the Like button. It's currently only on the homepage, but I plan to roll it out to all the other pages soon. The Like button allows you to "Like" (duh) a particular part of a site. So in the future if there is a properly functioning like button here, and you were to click on it, it would post to your wall saying "You like Switching from Facebook Connect to the Open Graph on The incredible Roach".

This shouldn't be confused with liking The incredible Roach itself though. For some reason Facebook has 2 definitions of what it means to "Like" something. If you Like TiR on its page on Facebook, that makes you a fan of the website/application and allows posts made on its Facebook page to show up in your newsfeed. Makes it easy to know whenever there are any updates, and makes the Roach feel a little more loved. So you can head on down to the Facebook page or use this other Like thing to the right to become a fan and start receiving updates.

Apart from this business of Liking, Facebook also changed their JavaScript SDK for the new Open Graph API. All pages on TiR have now been upgraded to the new SDK and load a bit faster.

You may have also noticed a few cosmetic changes to the site. I was thoroughly unhappy with the results of the previous attempt to make the Navigation links more noticeable. I am much more satisfied with the new look - the new Navigation area, new Recent Stuff area and the new Story Headers. I've also put in a pre-loader script on the homepage that should make all subsequent pages load much faster.

Finally, the first of the long overdue article series about my thoughts, post the Great Indian Developer Summit 2010 is also up. Check it out here. That's all folks!