Comments on: The Challenges of Cross-Platform Development http://www.socialtimes.com/2008/02/the-challenges-of-cross-platform-development/ The Social Times covers news, analysis and insight pertaining to the social web. Learn how to brand yourself and your company via the social web. Thu, 04 Dec 2008 22:10:09 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5 By: Danny http://www.socialtimes.com/2008/02/the-challenges-of-cross-platform-development/#comment-517 Danny Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:58:24 +0000 http://www.socialtimes.com/2008/02/the-challenges-of-cross-platform-development/#comment-517 Edit: I meant the "gadgets" Javascript namespace in step 2 above.... Edit: I meant the “gadgets” Javascript namespace in step 2 above….

]]> By: Danny http://www.socialtimes.com/2008/02/the-challenges-of-cross-platform-development/#comment-515 Danny Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:02:43 +0000 http://www.socialtimes.com/2008/02/the-challenges-of-cross-platform-development/#comment-515 Given the reality of proprietary OpenSocial extensions like the one offerred by MySpace, IMHO the ideal development path for OpenSocial is the following: 1) Design your OpenSocial app to adhere strictly to the Google spec (currently at 0.7). This should suffice for most functions (profile/friend queries, rendering, sharing and activity stream pushing). 2) Write alternative paths for code that uses Google's "widgets" Javascript namespace, since not all containers (e.g. MySpace) implement them. Ta da, you have an OpenSocial app that can run on any container, including Orkut and MySpace. Finally, 3) If your apps want to take advantage of extra metadata available via platform-specific, then go for it, making sure to test for existence of those calls in your code. If you follow this path then you don't have to worry about "coding to the platform." Given the reality of proprietary OpenSocial extensions like the one offerred by MySpace, IMHO the ideal development path for OpenSocial is the following:

1) Design your OpenSocial app to adhere strictly to the Google spec (currently at 0.7). This should suffice for most functions (profile/friend queries, rendering, sharing and activity stream pushing).

2) Write alternative paths for code that uses Google’s “widgets” Javascript namespace, since not all containers (e.g. MySpace) implement them.

Ta da, you have an OpenSocial app that can run on any container, including Orkut and MySpace. Finally,

3) If your apps want to take advantage of extra metadata available via platform-specific, then go for it, making sure to test for existence of those calls in your code.

If you follow this path then you don’t have to worry about “coding to the platform.”

]]> By: Danny http://www.socialtimes.com/2008/02/the-challenges-of-cross-platform-development/#comment-4359 Danny Wed, 06 Feb 2008 16:58:24 +0000 http://www.socialtimes.com/2008/02/the-challenges-of-cross-platform-development/#comment-4359 Edit: I meant the "gadgets" Javascript namespace in step 2 above.... Edit: I meant the “gadgets” Javascript namespace in step 2 above….

]]> By: Jonathan Kleiman http://www.socialtimes.com/2008/02/the-challenges-of-cross-platform-development/#comment-514 Jonathan Kleiman Wed, 06 Feb 2008 16:08:52 +0000 http://www.socialtimes.com/2008/02/the-challenges-of-cross-platform-development/#comment-514 I still think it's okay that people have to check out sites like www.allfacebook.com to find good apps ;) I still think it’s okay that people have to check out sites like http://www.allfacebook.com to find good apps ;)

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