hi Gordon,

Honestly I've found that using a combination of javascript and Flash
is the best way to go.

The benefits of going javascript + Flash (using the ExternalInterface)
are:

[1] By using a combination of javascript + Flash you can take
advantage of things like container prefetching. In javascript, if your
application always requests the viewer and owner information then the
containers will typically prefetch that data and make it available to
your app straight away.  It's a good thing to take advantage of
because it helps your app load faster.  Obviously if you used pure
Flash then there's no way to take advantage of prefetching of data,
and you'll have to make a REST call every time your app loads.  (You
can read about prefetching here: 
http://code.google.com/apis/orkut/articles/latency.html#prefetch)

[2] There's a lot of great javascript examples out there that you
might want to make use of.  It's very easy to grab a bunch of code
from, say Lane and Jason's opensocial articles, and wrap them in a
function that you can call via the Flash ExternalInterface.

[3] So far, when a container releases container specific extensions,
they typically release them as a javascript api first.  If you use
pure Flash it's unlikely you'd have access to the api.  However, by
using the ExternalInterface + javascript you can call those javascript
container extensions just like everyone else.  An example is myspace's
postTo - you can call it from javascript, you can't call it via REST.

There's an example of how to create a Flash app here using SWFObject +
getProxyUrl:
http://groups.google.com/group/opensocial-orkut/browse_thread/thread/833621ff612de633/3ee014db88235f4b?lnk=gst
Things are slightly different on myspace (you can upload your swf file
to their servers and then reference that url instead of using
getProxyUrl).  For the ExternalInterface part - simply call
ExternalInterface.call(javascript_method_name, params); where
javascript_method_name is a function to update app data, or send a
notification, etc.

-Dave

On Jul 17, 10:52 am, gordon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Can someone please explain the process of making a flash application
> based on the Opensocial API? It seems that none of the social networks
> have the REST api implemented and are all geared towards javascript
> widgets. Am I going to have to put the object/embed markup inside the
> module content and then use ExternalInterface to call the opensocial
> javascript methods? Is that even allowed? Is there a better way?
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated.
> -Gordon
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