Accessibility
Facebook

Facebook

Created:
30 March 2009
User Level:
All
Products:
Flex

Comparing Flash iFrame and FBML Facebook applications

The following table summarizes the differences when creating your Flash Platform application as an iFrame or FBML Facebook application. The two most significant differences are the ability to control the embedding of a Flash object and the ability to access scripts.

Feature

iFrame

FBML

Flash Player version and detection code

You control the embedding. You write (or include) the JavaScript detection code and the selection of the required Flash Player version. Typically, SWFObject is used.

You have no control over the embedding. Currently, the <FB:swf> tag requires Flash Player version 9.0.115 and there is no way to specify any other version.

Script access

Can be denied by setting allow_script_access=never.
This means no full screen, no JavaScript, etc.

Use fb:fbjs-bridge for limited JavaScript access on FBML pages.

Fullscreen mode

Supported.

Not supported.

Simple integration of FBML tags

Supported through use of XFBML.

Supported. This allows you to simply integrate Facebook components and dialog boxes. You can also embed Flash objects in the fb:iframe tag.

Application server

Not required. Your SWF container page could just be an HTML page that uses JavaScript to parse and pass the GET URL session variables passed with the page request to the SWF by setting the flashvars property of the SWFObject.

Not required. Your SWF can be a static HTML or FBML page.

Making Facebook API calls from Flash

Supported.

Supported.

Controlling URL history

Supported through iFrame URL.

Supported by browser.

References

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License

About the author

This content was authored by Facebook.