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Updated documentation has been posted for the Widget Developer Kit (WDK). It is available here. This covers the topic of advanced widget customization in more detail. Additional references are provided to make it much easier to understand the pre-existing markup and java script logic of the widgets and therefore allow easier customization.

 

Some sample customized widgets have been added to this site to demonstrate how to take default widget and using WDK customization, create a very customized UI or functionality. Check out the samples here. More examples will be added in the coming weeks...

 

Finally, one additional very useful piece of functionality is now incorporated into the WDK. This allows for asynchronous refresh of widgets on your web page. So, if building a site using the Flux API to login/logout users, you can now make a simple call to the WDK Event Manager to asynchronously refresh the state of all widgets as necessary. This subject is covered in detail in the latest docs.

A number of feature additions have been made to the DAAPI in the past few weeks.  The documentation for the Content DAAPI and the People DAAPI has been updated to reference all new functionality.  A summary of the changes to both DAAPIs is below, but check out the latest documentation for full technical specifications on all the latest functionality.

 

The People DAAPI contains the following enhancements: 

 
A summary of improvements to the Content DAAPI is listed below: 

  • The content feed now contains an additional element for "Alias" which allows a specific content type to contain a custom label.
  • Additional elements are returned in the content feed for Topics such as Last Post Creation Date, Last Post Creator's Title etc.  This allows the full Flux discussion board functionality to be built using the DAAPI and FML.
  • Additional elements are returned in the content feed for Videos, including ISRC, Embed Code, original source URL
  • The DAAPI content feed now fully supports Audio and Album content types
  • An additional parameter can be specified for "date-range".  This allows the content feed to be filtered by creation date, as in the following example: http://daapi.flux.com/2.0/00001/XML/E2F6FFFF0099C7740002FFFFF6E2/feeds/news/?date-range=month
  • For external content, the Single Content Feed now contains an element for "OriginalUri" which specifies the external permalink/URI of the content
  • The Single Content Feed is fully widgets compatible, so allows content to be retrieved without a Flux content UCID (i.e. by external permalink/URI).  As with the People DAAPI this will initiate discovery of the external content into Flux.  As with the People feed example, permalinks must be escaped.  An example is here: http://daapi.flux.com/2.0/00001/XML/E2F6FFFF0099C7740002FFFFF6E2/feeds/content/?q=http%3A%2F%2Ffluxblog.info%2F%3Fp%3D24

The Flux Widget Developer Kit (WDK) officially launched on 3/6/08. This is great news for developers building integrated websites on the Flux Platform as it exposes a common, easily customizable framework upon which all widgets are built. This release now allows for 3 levels of customization when creating your own widgets. In the most simple cases, simply use the editor to style your widgets and drop the codes onto your pages. If you require additional customization, the WDK allows both mark-up and functionality of the widgets to be easily customized to suit your needs. However, if you want to just take your data and create your own widgets from the ground up, simply use the Data Access API (DAAPI) to retrieve the data and have complete control over your widget.

 

The widget pick-up page (accessible via the Community Manager for community admins) is the hub from which you can create and customize your widgets. As described above, every widget now comes with a editor and as a developer you also have access to the widget's mark-up for additional customization to override it's default look and feel. Additionally, the core functionality of the widget can be overridden if necessary by providing an additional javascript file with custom logic.

 

Full WDK documentation is provided here. It provides details on every aspect of the WDK, including:
   • Generating your widget codes
   • Customizing the mark-up of a widget
   • Customizing the functionality of a widget
   • Using FTP to host custom HTML and JS codes for your widgets on the Flux static servers

 

To illustrate why the WDK is such a powerful tool for developers, an example is provided below. This shows how the default Content Action widget provided on the Flux Platform has been customized to achieve a completely custom look for the MTV.com website.

 

Default Content Action Widget:

 Custom Content Action Widget:

With this community, Flux launches the first version of the Flux Developer Tools. This includes a number of important features for developers wishing to build community functionality using the Flux Platform. The focus is both on providing an advanced toolset for customization of Flux community sites, and also for providing extensive interoperability via easy integration points.

As a developer you can leverage two different environments for your Flux site - Preview and Live. This is a new approach to customizing the community which provides a safe "Preview" environment in which to develop all visual (CSS, mark-up) changes. Once you are happy with the changes, simply use the tools provided to deploy these changes to your live site. Rollback functionality is also provided so any mistakes made during deployment of changes can be easily reversed.

The Flux Markup Language (FML) allows you to create highly customized community websites for your users. FML enables the Flux platform to be extended to meet your particular needs. FML is a combination of standard HTML tags with additional proprietary Flux-specific tags added. The Flux-specific tags are used to access the social data and layer it into the community pages. Any web developer who is familiar with HTML can easily get started with FML without needing to have any understanding of the .NET framework upon which the site is built. FML currently allows all standard HTML tags to be used, and CSS inclusion and JavaScript is fully supported by FML. Check out a couple of examples below of FML usage.

We are committed to providing a highly interoperable platform. At the heart of this is the Flux Data Access API (DAAPI). The DAAPI provides a standardized Atom-based mechanism for retrieving all publicly available community data. DAAPI queries allow you to specify the exact data to be returned. For example, you can choose to retrieve the top ten most active members on your community, or the five most recently uploaded videos. FML uses the DAAPI exclusively to retrieve its data. The DAAPI can also be used outside of the community to integrate with external widgets.

To learn more, check out the documentation, examples, and discussion boards on this site. We'll be rolling out improvements and additional functionality in the coming weeks so stay tuned.