Apple made waves when they announced that Facebook would be deeply integrated into iOS 6. To compliment the newfound integration, Facebook announced that they were working on a new SDK for iOS developers. It would improve upon the current SDK while allowing room for iOS 6 improvements as they are made available. After a successful beta period, the SDK is ready for action.
Facebook announced yesterday afternoon that Facebook SDK 3.0 for iOS is now available for all to use. If you develop apps for iOS and are already using the new features in iOS 6 beta 4, then you owe it to yourself to get familiarized with the new Facebook SDK.
Unfortunately, support for iOS 6 is not included in the final release because iOS 6 is still in beta. If you want to start testing the Facebook SDK for iOS 6, you can grab the beta right now. Facebook will hopefully have a full release up by the time iOS 6 launches.
If you’ve been using the Facebook SDK 3.0 beta, you’re also in for a few surprises. The release version includes a number of new features including “ready-to-use native UI controls, better session management, improved support for calling Facebook APIs, and support for modern Objective-C language features.”
Alongside those features, the Facebook SDK aims to make your life as a developer much easier by providing pre-built UI components for functions like Login, Friend Picker and Place Picker. You are more than welcome to build your own custom UI components for these features, but it’s a nice gesture for those apps that don’t have the resources or the knowhow to build their own custom Login screen.
At this point in time, Facebook will be maintaining two versions of the new iOS SDK. The current release version is the master version. The other is the aforementioned iOS 6 beta. It’s assumed that Facebook will merge the two SDKs once the iOS 6 version leaves beta.
For now, you can download the new Facebook SDK for iOS at GitHub. If you need help with development, check out all the great tutorials and documentation over at the Facebook developer’s site.