Facebook API and Adobe Flash: Marriage Not Made in Heaven

We do widget, and as anyone who creates or user widgets knows Adobe Flash-based widget have dominated the social networking and media landscape for many years. With the advent (and growing popularity) of the Facebook Platform, many thought that Flash-based widget would quickly and easily make their way, unfettered, unto Facebook pages, but this has not been the case!
Facebook-flash
Flash does work on Facebook, but with some limitations. For companies and developers looking to port their Flash-ware to Facebook, here are some important considerations to be aware of:

  • Facebook does not support Flash to Javascript communication
    • Interaction between Javascript or FBSJ and Flash is prohibited. You’ll have to use flashvars to pass information into your Flash component.
  • Facebook does not support Flash links/navigation
    • In more technical terms, navigateToUrl and getURL by default do not work in Facebook (See work around)
    • You have to embed your Flash in an IFRAME in order to enable navigation to work.
  • Facebook and Flash have a problem sharing the same session
    • In less technical terms, writing Facebook/Flash applications that recognize a user’s unique activity require some hard work (and experience).
  • Flash cannot automatically begin playing on a user’s Facebook profile page
    • Flash components cannot automatically begin playing on profile pages, so the fb:swf tag displays a developer-specified place-holder image until the user interacts with the object.