Facebook has open sourced Ringmark, its browser test suite for building apps on the mobile web, according to a post on the company’s HTML5 blog today.

The effort is part of Facebook’s push to promote HTML5 development. One of the major challenges with HTML5 development right now is fragmentation in mobile browser capabilities, but Ringmark lets developers see instantly whether their apps will be able to run on a given mobile browser.

The social network has an interest in helping HTML5 become a more viable platform for developers to build upon since it cannot monetize native iOS or Android apps. Many developers see HTML5 as inferior to native mobile experiences, but as HTML5 improves, there is more likelihood that developers will adopt it and then Facebook can benefit from the use of Credits in these apps.

Promoting HTML5 is also Facebook’s way of supporting a potential new wave of mobile development.

“For those that are building with the web today, it’s a major hurdle to learn native technologies like Objective-C and Java,” Facebook engineer Matt Kelly wrote in the blog post announcing the news. “We hope that an improved mobile web can unlock a large contingency of developers that could, and will, be developing for mobile.”

When the company introduced Ringmark at Mobile World Congress in February, there were more than 400 tests available. Now that the project is open sourced, any developer can contribute tests and provide value for others in the community. The company hopes that over time this will help mobile browser vendors build browsers that better serve developer needs and bring better apps and games to consumers.

“This is the beginning of a process, starting with open sourcing the tests,” Kelly wrote. “As we continue to build, we’ll continue to open source even more of this work.”

Facebook also says it will soon contribute Ringmark tests to the Core Mobile Web Platform Community Group in the W3C. The group is an industry-wide consortium including manufacturers, carriers and developers that aim to push HTML5 forward with a single set of standards.

Developers can view and contribute to the Ringmark code here and here. The test suite can be found here.

Social marketing platform Involver today introduced a visual tool for building Facebook applications and other customizable experiences.

The Visual SML is an addition to Involver’s Social Markup Language, a system that enables front-end developers to code apps more efficiently. Now with the visual tool, coding isn’t necessary. Marketers can drag and drop widgets, like videos, photo galleries or contest forms, onto a canvas that can be used on Facebook tabs, websites and mobile landing pages.

Using a technology platform like Involver could help large brands and agencies save time and money by making development more efficient. For example, Involver manages changes in the Facebook API, so when Facebook tweaks its code, Involver updates SML accordingly. Developers can maintain the same SML tags and avoid having to fix their existing applications. The cost of a yearly license, however, prevents the platform from being an option for small businesses or agencies that don’t regularly produce apps for their clients.

Companies like Vitrue and Wildfire also offer drag-and-drop tools, but Roland Smart, Sr. Director of Product Marketing at Involver, says the difference with Involver’s product is how designers and front-end switch between the visual tool and SML code.

“[For brands and agencies] there are fundamental differences between the marketing side of the house and the development side of the house,” Smart says. “Now they can both be in the same platform and work together.”

Smart says the platform is useful for large companies that might have front end developers on the corporate side, but not among the regional offices. Corporate can use the SML code and the regional marketers can use the visual tool.

Interestingly, Facebook is a client of Involver’s. The social network uses SML for some of its applications, including the Super Bowl Ad Meter it released in partnership with USA Today. That app, which let users rate Super Bowl commercials, integrated Open Graph and was accessible from multiple Facebook pages, USAToday.com and the mobile web.

New platform policy more mindful of developer schedules – Facebook updated its policy to make any breaking changes to the API on the first Wednesday of every month. Previously, changes were pushed on the first of the month, which sometimes fell on a weekend. Now all changes will be made during the work week.

Facebook works to stop secondary market trading - Bloomberg reported that Facebook is working to curb trading of company shares on secondary market by early April, ahead of the company’s initial public offering in early May. This means there will be no new trades and the IPO won’t be until at least May 2.

Facebook to investors: Zuckerberg won’t be overly involved in IPO – Reuters reported that Facebook representatives at a recent investor meeting told those in attendance not to expect much involvement from CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Specifically, the report said that “expectations should be set pretty low.” [Image via Facebook]

Zuckerberg’s lawyers expedite disclosures – The Federal and Trade Commission agreed to eliminate the 30-day waiting period and expedite the approval of a filing for Zuckerberg. The CEO plans to exercise stock options worth about $5 billion in Facebook’s initial public offering, according to the New York Times.

Rumor: Facebook works on its search engine – According to anonymous Business Week sources, Facebook has hired a former Google engineer to work on the company’s search function to make it easier for users to access users, photos, videos and other Facebook information, possibly including elsewhere on the web.

Google launching commenting system – Google is set to launch a commenting system for third-party websites that is likely meant to rival Facebook’s plug-in.

Facebook launches cover photo contest – Facebook Marketing Solutions is sponsoring a contest for businesses to get featured in the cover photo of the page. The photos are supposed to capture a business in a “different or new” way. The winning photo will become the cover photo for the page, which has nearly a million Likes.

Facebook developers can now display Facebook-sponsored promotions in their games to encourage players to make a first-time purchase, according to a post on Facebook’s developer blog.

“New payer promotions,” which the social network created in February, give users who haven’t bought Facebook Credits before an extra $4 of in-app currency when they buy $1 in Credits. Facebook has advertised this promotion through offer walls and sidebar modules, but with today’s announcement, it will also get in-game placement.

The offer is meant to turn casual social gamers into paying players. Once users add billing information to their accounts and experience the in-game advantages that come from spending Credits, they are more likely to continue to buy virtual and digital goods within applications. Facebook says early data shows that about 20 percent of the users who make that first-time purchase spend more within a month.

The in-game promotions are available through DealSpot. After developers add a piece of code to their games, players who have not previously purchased Credits will see an icon promoting the offer. TrialPay, which controls DealSpot, says it will test several icons and optimize for performance without requiring any additional actions from developers.

It is unclear how much control developers have over where the icon appears in the game. In the example provided by Facebook, the offer is placed on the right-hand side of the screen, an area used in most games for less game-critical features. This might not be the most optimal spot to get a user’s attention, but it could be more effective than sidebar modules (see below).

NPR plans to develop an application called GeoGraph, which will expand upon its efforts to improve Facebook engagement and media consumption by geotargeting posts. The public radio organization says Facebook has committed to support the endeavor.

NPR found success with an initial experiment that led to record traffic and an increase in Likes, comments and shares, but to scale the test, the organization will need to use Facebook’s API. NPR detailed its plans in an application to the Knight News Challenge, a media innovation contest. The project could have an impact on how other media companies — and possibly brands — distribute content through Facebook.

In October 2011, NPR began its experiment with Seattle member station KPLU. Each day or so, NPR would post a KPLU story to its Facebook page, but it would use Facebook’s geotargeting capabilities to limit the audience to only Seattle residents. NPR ultimately posted about 50 geotargeted KPLU links over a four-month period. The posts accounted for 12 percent of KPLU.org’s total traffic during that time. The test also resulted in record traffic to the website, both for a single month and a single day.

NPR found that local stories outperformed global stories six-to-one in terms of engagement rate on Facebook (likes, comments and shares as a percentage of unique viewers of a post). Anecdotally, NPR noticed deeper conversations in the Facebook comment threads of local stories.

Geotargeting posts is a lesser-known feature of Facebook pages that we’ve detailed in The Facebook Marketing Bible. Geotargeting allows organizations to maintain one large page, while sharing more content per day with audiences that are more likely to engage with each post.

To expand geotargeting beyond a single city, NPR wants to build GeoGraph using Facebook APIs. It explains GeoGraph as “a newsroom tool to manage the pitch-to-publish process” that “addresses unique editorial and localization needs of news organizations where publishing directly through Facebook or other tools fail.” The project could lead more pages to take advantage of this strategy. The organization says it plans to make the tool publicly available and documented so others can replicate it.

According to NPR, Facebook Journalist Program Manager Vadim Lavrusik will provide support through the process. A Facebook spokesperson tells us the company will provide NPR with feedback about best practices and technical implementation of APIs, but it will not fund the project or devote a set number of hours to the effort.

Facebook added a mobile referrals dashboard so developers can track and analyze traffic from mobile devices, the company announced in a blog post Friday.

Developers can now view mobile app clicks by day, device and source. The insights also provide mobile referral data by age, gender, language and country. This real-time information can help developers understand their audience and how Facebook’s mobile platform is or isn’t helping them get distribution for their apps. The device and demographic data is also likely to help developers’ marketing efforts and allow them make more informed decisions about the direction of their product.

Facebook recently added game stories in News Feed as a way for users to discover apps on their mobile devices. Developers can now see the distribution of referral traffic from the mobile feed, versus mobile search, bookmarks, notifications and Timeline. This might allow developers to better understand Facebook’s mobile platform and decide which discovery channels to emphasize. It might also highlight areas that Facebook needs to improve in order to provide enough value to mobile developers.

The new insights are available for all apps that integrate Facebook, including native iOS and web applications. They can be accessed from the “Mobile” tab underneath “Traffic” in the app insights dashboard.

Facebook shared a number of updates on its developer blog today, including new features, API changes and bug fixes.

New link makes apps easier to add – Tab application pages now include an “Add App to Page” option to make it simpler for admins to add custom tabs to their pages. The link is found in the gear menu on pages associated with page tab applications (see right). Developers can enable this feature in the advanced section of the Dev App.

Payments reports updated – Daily detail reports for developers accepting payments now include a new order type. The new “J” type is a reversal of a chargeback that happened out of the window. Facebook says this shouldn’t affect developers’ payout totals, but this gives developers data on the orders.

Fan gate bug fixed – Facebook resolved an issue that prevented fan gates — tab apps that hide content until users Like a page — from working properly when pages converted to the new Timeline design. Even though pages cannot set default landing tabs, tab apps continue to support fan-gating now that the bug has been fixed.

Time zones to be removed from events – Facebook will disable event start and end times from being returned with time zones from the Graph API as of April 1. This sounds counter to the changes to events announced Wednesday. We are awaiting clarification from Facebook.

For more details about upcoming breaking changes and a list of other bug fixes this week, see Facebook’s Developer Blog. We covered the latest changes to the Pages API in more depth here.

Facebook announced a number of changes and initiatives this week, including a program to reward developers who drive sales using Credits among European users.

European incentive program begins – Facebook will give developers who drive more than US$100,000 in sales to European customers in a given quarter will be rewarded with an additional 3 percent related to those sales. The program will take into account payments beween Jan. 1 and March 31. Facebook says the program will be evaluated quarterly and may or may not be renewed.

Last year 15 million users bought virtual goods using Facebook Credits. The company did not break down the demographics of paying users, but this new program suggests Europe might be underrepresented.

Platform policies updated - Facebook removed its policy prohibiting page tab applications from hosting media that played automatically. This change comes following the announcement that pages will not be able to designate a custom landing tab once they convert to Timeline.

Facebook also revised its mobile web app policy to make it clear that web apps running within a Facebook iOS app may only use iOS-approved payment methods. These apps may not reference, use or otherwise encourage use of Facebook Credits and other non-iOS payment methods. The company also reminded developers that they must comply with the Video Privacy Protection Act and obtain any opt-in consent necessary from users so that user data subject to the VPPA may be shared on Facebook.

New online course for developers - Facebook partnered with Pluralsight to provide an online course for developers new to the platform. The course goes over the main components of the platform, provides code samples and other tips for building Facebook apps.

App profile pages removed - As previously announced, Facebook removed all app profile pages this week. The pages now redirect to the application canvas page. Developers can create fan pages for their apps if they want a place for a community to grow.

For more details about breaking changes and bug fixes, see the Facebook Developer Blog.

Facebook plans to soon change the way it structures its API partner program, assigning “preferred” status to developers in four verticals: page management, ads, insights and custom app development, according to TechCrunch sources.

Currently, Facebook has two tiers, an Ads API partner program and a Preferred Developer Consultant program through which it grants API permissions and allows companies to highlight their status with badges like the one seen right. In November 2011, the social network announced it would unify these under a single title, the Facebook Marketing API Program. By adding more verticals and categorizing developers based on the service they provide, as TechCrunch reports, Facebook could help businesses discover the type of provider they’re looking for.

Facebook started the Preferred Developer Consultants program at the end of 2009, with 14 companies. Now it has 90 preferred developers in its directory. These developers had to apply and get approved by Facebook. The most recent submission round ended in December 2011, but the social network has not yet announced the new additions. On the Ads API side, Facebook has more than 50 partners providing managed services and software tools to help businesses create and optimize ad campaigns on the site. With more of these companies cropping up and others consolidating, it will be useful to have a system in place to indicate which vendors are qualified to provide which services.

Facebook did not respond to requests for comment on possible changes to its developer programs.

One of the bits of news hidden in this week’s flood of Facebook marketing and HTML5 announcements is that viral channels for native Android apps are coming to the platform in a few weeks.

That will finally bring the mobile platform to parity between Android and iOS. Developers for both platforms will be able to promote their apps in the news feed and through requests and bookmarks. If a person sees activity from a mobile app in their news feed, they’ll be driven to the app if they have it or the right page in the iTunes store or Android Market for downloading it. Facebook first unveiled these mobile channels back in October, but they were just for iOS and mobile web apps.

“We’ll be enabling native Android apps starting in the coming weeks,” said James Pearce, who joined as Facebook’s new head of mobile developer relations a few months ago from Sencha. “If you’ve already got an Android app, this is a  clear opportunity for distribution.”

Continue reading on our sister site, Inside Mobile Apps.