How To Make A Friendly Facebook Like Button

Web Development, ,

First I was very excited when I saw the new Facebook Like Button. But when I checked the code to see how it works, I noticed that this button actually allows Facebook to track all the Facebook users on your site, no matter if they click it or not (see my previous post on how this works).

As a publisher, you might not want to annoy the visitors of your site with that. So I hacked together an alternative like button, that only connects to Facebook if you click it. Continue reading How To Make A Friendly Facebook Like Button →

How Facebook’s Like Button Works

Web Development, , ,

Facebook has introduced a new Like Button together with some other “social plugins” at their f8 conference last week. Everybody can put it on their website so that visitors can “like” a page and add it to their Facebook profile without leaving the site.

This button actually allows Facebook to track all visitors of the external site, no matter if they click it or not (as long as they are Facebook users – but who isn’t?). Continue reading How Facebook’s Like Button Works →

New Tutorial and Updates for the SoundCloud AS3 API

Soundcloud, , , ,

I just wrote a new tutorial for the SoundCloud AS3 API, “How to Go Through OAuth Authentication in a Single Browser Window”. This tutorial explains how to set up a web-based Flash application in a way that the user stays in the same browser window during the OAuth authentication and does not need to copy /paste the verification code manually. Continue reading New Tutorial and Updates for the SoundCloud AS3 API →

We don’t need Flash on the iPad, we need better tools to build HTML5 sites

Flash Platform, , , , , ,

The recent discussion about whether the web needs Flash or not was overdue. My opinion is this: Yes, we need an alternative to Flash Player, and HTML5 could soon replace it in most cases. But most of all we need a good IDE to develop content for modern browsers.

Flash has two critical shortcomings that make it hard to use for many projects, not only on mobile devices: Continue reading We don’t need Flash on the iPad, we need better tools to build HTML5 sites →

Introducing Scup

Scup, , , , , , ,

ScupToday I’ve released a little AIR tool for all SoundCloud heavy-users. It’s called Scup, which is short for SoundCloud Uploader – and it does just that. You can upload tracks from your desktop by simply dragging them on the program window and then create a set (i.e. a playlist) consisting of these tracks. Grab it here! I hope you’ll find it useful. Continue reading Introducing Scup →

Updates to the SoundCloud AS3 API

Soundcloud, , , ,

During the last week I made some improvements to the SoundCloud AS3 API library:

  • Full ASDoc documentation is now available online
  • Uploaded an example file for Flash CS4
  • API is now prepared for scenarios where you want to automatically get an access token after authentication (I’ll do an extra post on this in the next days)
  • Added support for requests to public resources without having to authenticate first

Continue reading Updates to the SoundCloud AS3 API →

Quick Start Tutorial for the SoundCloud AS3 API

Soundcloud, , , ,

The first release version of the SoundCloud AS3 API wrapper is now available on github. This library enables your Flash or Flex projects to communicate with SoundCloud’s API to upload tracks, create playlists, edit user info and so on. It handles all the complicated OAuth authentication in the background so you only have to deal with a few simple methods. Continue reading Quick Start Tutorial for the SoundCloud AS3 API →

Renaming Flex Builder solves one problem but causes another

Flash Platform, , ,

Yesterday I had a meeting with a client who was looking for a Flex Developer to maintain an existing Flex project. I had a look at the code and was pretty confused because, well, it wasn’t Flex. It was just a huge Flex Builder ActionScript project including several .fla files full of library assets. Just because he had been given a repository with a Flex Builder project in it, the client thougt he had to look for a Flex Developer to add some features to his application. Continue reading Renaming Flex Builder solves one problem but causes another →

Soundcloud API for Flash and Flex

Soundcloud, , , ,

I’ve just started working on an AS3-Wrapper for the Soundcloud-API. If you never heard of Soundcloud: It’s a very cool service for sharing audio files on the web. Something like Youtube for music, but with style. They already have API-wrappers for Ruby, Cocoa and Python and there are several great apps using these APIs, e.g. the excellent recording app FiRe for the iPhone. Continue reading Soundcloud API for Flash and Flex →