Adobe says that developers can now utilize its ActionScript 3 Client Library in building new applications for the Facebook Platform. With the new APIs, developers will be able to incorporate Flash technology into their creations. Facebook has been opening itself via Facebook Platform to increased levels of developer interaction and tinkering.
Adobe
Systems has made its open-source ActionScript 3 Client Library available
for the Facebook Platform, opening the latter even more to developers.
Through the library, more than 60 free APIs are available as of March 31,
allowing developers to combine Adobe's Flash platform technologies into applications
built for Facebook.
Flash allows for the building of applications that incorporate real-time
video and audio, as well as graphics; interactive marketing sites are a key
business use of the technology.
The joint effort between Adobe and Facebook has created the fourth
officially supported script for the Facebook Platform; users can also rely on
the PHP and JavaScript client libraries, as well as an iPhone client library.
Unofficially, developers can use virtually any language for developing applications.
"You've always been able to make API
calls from Flash, and a lot of developers had written their own code for it,
but there were no good toolkits or libraries or support for it," Josh
Elman, platform program manager for Facebook, said in an interview. "So
that's why [Facebook and Adobe] started working together."
Facebook has been
expanding
Facebook Platform's development capabilities, adding APIs that allow
developers access to content and methods for sharing for Facebook Photos,
Status, Notes, Links and Video.
Facebook has also been increasing its connectivity on the user side, with
the
March 14 announcement of Facebook Connect for the iPhone, which allows
mobile users to connect in real time to their social network via iPhone or the
iPod Touch.
The social networking phenomenon has also helped Adobe in other ways.
Adobe has seen adoption of its
Flash
Lite technology on mobile handsets pick up thanks to the popularity of YouTube,
MySpace and other social networking sites, according to research group
Strategy Analytics. Some 1 billion mobile handsets enabled with Flash Lite
Version 3.0 had been shipped worldwide by the end of January 2009.
Email
Print
