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.