Benefits of Flash for a widget?

[sthaznpride17]

Hi all,

I am in the beginning stages of developing a widget that will be embedded on some partner sites. The widget's initial display needs to have two interactive "tabs", each tab containing a list of links. The widget will be updated after a link is clicked, displaying more links, and will be updated once again after a link is clicked. It is a pretty hefty widget content-wise and has a few aspects to it, since it condenses a whole lot of information.

My main concern is that if I stick to basic HTML/CSS/Javascript, the widget will be a pain to implement. Would using Flash instead be easier to get this project done?

Cliffs: Widget easier to do using standard html/css/js or flash?

 

[DaveSimmons]

Is this for public sites or itranets / corporate in-house use?

AJAX would save customers from needing to install Flash, and will work with iPhone / iTouch that don't have Flash.

If you do use Flash, I'd suggest setting the version down to 8 if possible for wider compatibility.

 

[sthaznpride17]

This is for public sites, anybody should be able to put this on their website. That also means I need to find a way around Ajax due to the cross domain issues. Isn't flash more or less installed on every computer?

 

[DaveSimmons]

> Isn't flash more or less installed on every computer?

Some people disable it to stop Flash-based ads. Also, most mobile devices (PDAs, phones) have no flash, old flash (as low as 6) or crippled Flash Lite. iTouch / iPod have no flash support and Jobs is so far against adding it.

If you only care about Windows and Macs then Flash is an OK choice.

 

[troytime]

i think your best bet is a javascript called from your site and then a javascript function call from that script.

that way the people implementing the code only really need to copy a few (2?) lines of code
your javascript can output a flash widget, or an iframe, or the html content itself.

 

[Markbnj]

Originally posted by: troytime
i think your best bet is a javascript called from your site and then a javascript function call from that script.

that way the people implementing the code only really need to copy a few (2?) lines of code
your javascript can output a flash widget, or an iframe, or the html content itself.

:thumbsup: And it can send the right stuff based on the browser caps.

 

[NiKeFiDO]

Originally posted by: sthaznpride17
This is for public sites, anybody should be able to put this on their website. That also means I need to find a way around Ajax due to the cross domain issues. Isn't flash more or less installed on every computer?

You can just have ajax make a call to a script on your server which connects to an other service. For instance in PHP, you can use cURL or some other HTTP client.

Obviously I don't know the details of your cross domain issues, but it's usually not an issue when "talking" to third party servers because you can connection to them via your server side code.

 

[troytime]

Originally posted by: Markbnj

Originally posted by: troytime
i think your best bet is a javascript called from your site and then a javascript function call from that script.

that way the people implementing the code only really need to copy a few (2?) lines of code
your javascript can output a flash widget, or an iframe, or the html content itself.

:thumbsup: And it can send the right stuff based on the browser caps.

exactly.
AND, if you wanted to get some SEO value from this, you could output a link to your site above/below/or in the widget (but outside the flash or iframe)

 

[sthaznpride17]

Originally posted by: NiKeFiDO

Originally posted by: sthaznpride17
This is for public sites, anybody should be able to put this on their website. That also means I need to find a way around Ajax due to the cross domain issues. Isn't flash more or less installed on every computer?

You can just have ajax make a call to a script on your server which connects to an other service. For instance in PHP, you can use cURL or some other HTTP client.

Obviously I don't know the details of your cross domain issues, but it's usually not an issue when "talking" to third party servers because you can connection to them via your server side code.

Well my intent was that the anybody should be able to attach a <script> tag to their website and get the widget. Now if the src of the script tag was a javascript file on my server, I can easily load up the html/etc, or the src can be a webservice which outputs the javascript code. I'm not too sure, but wouldn't this way mean that the widget wouldn't be able to Ajax to my service because it is running on a different domain? All the server side code on my end would have to be ASP.net btw (I wish I could use PHP).