EDIT: Please read the comments before reading this entire post. This is no longer supported and I will not be held responsible for what you do with it. I’m not even sure any of this still works.
Recently, John Chow made a post (found here) showing us all how to use a little JavaScript trickery to do what normally would be a rather tedious task on Facebook, inviting ALL of your friends to a group or fan page. If you read through the comments made on his post, you’ll notice quite a few people saying the method is dead. I beg to differ!
To resurrect this method and to help John Chow and his hearty following, I’ve come up with 2 simple alternatives to help you continue to easily do this task without resorting back to clicking on each and every one of your friends. The first method uses the same code John posted, but very slightly altered to ensure that it works every time. Here’s how to implement it, if you’re a FireFox user, without having to paste the code into the URL bar every time:
Step 1: Enable your Bookmarks Toolbar (if it isn’t already)
1a: Right-click the menu bar and make sure there is a check next to “Bookmarks Toolbar”
Step 2: Add a new bookmark to the toolbar
2a: Right-click the Bookmarks Toolbar and select “New Bookmark…”
Step 3: Edit the bookmark properties
3a: Type a short name for your bookmark (shorter is better!)
3b: Paste the following JavaScript snippet into the “Location” setting
3c: Click the “Add” button (you should have noticed your newly made button by now)
javascript:elms=document.getElementById('all_friends').getElementsByTagName('li');for(var fid in elms){if(typeof elms[fid] === 'object'){fs.click(elms[fid]);}}
That’s all there is to it! You can go test it out now. If you find that this method still no longer works for you, then Facebook is up to its silly little games again. They seem to roll-out changes to people at different times. For me, this method is still alive and well. If you can’t use this method, here’s another simple alternative for you FireFox users:
Step 1: Install the Greasemonkey extension (found here)
Step 2: Install this Greasemonkey script (found here)
Yup, simple as clicking the install buttons found on each of those sites. If you’ve followed all the steps correctly, you should now have 2 working methods to select all your friends on Facebook. Happy inviting!
As you may have noticed, I’ve only explained how to use these methods using FireFox instead of Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, or Google Chrome. While they may work in alternative browsers, I haven’t tested. The only browser I use is FireFox. Please feel free to tryout the other browsers and let me know how it goes for you. The bookmark method should be cross-compatible with all browsers that support JavaScript. As far as the Greasemonkey method goes, there may or may not be Greasemonkey plugins/extensions for other browsers. If there is, I can’t guarantee my script will work on them. Anyways, if you try other browsers, let me know how it goes.
If either of these methods helped you, or if you seem to be having some sort of issue with them, please post in the comments below to let me know. Thanks for reading!