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FAQ

Welcome to the Clearspring Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), a quick rundown on some key things.  If you've got suggestions or requests for things to add, let us know in the forums.

General Topics

Technical Overview Analytics & Reporting Technical Specifics Troubleshooting

General Topics

In 30 seconds, what is the Clearspring platform?

The Clearspring platform is an infrastructure for distributing, tracking, monetizing, and allowing users to share dynamic web application components and content, also called widgets. It provides the widget developer with tools to share their content across the web, manage configuration and other advanced capabilities of their widgets, and to track their progress over time. It provides end users with easy to use tools for sharing and distributing content themselves. If they see something they like, they can grab it for their own site, their social networking profile, or even email it to their friends. This goes far beyond the standard "get the code" type functionality seen in many widgets today, and beyond the basic sharing services offered by competing widget platforms.

Clearspring is the most powerful, viral, and scalable widget platform anywhere. It is the widget platform.

There's a lot more to it, of course. Read more in the Introduction to Clearspring or just get started right away.

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How much does it cost?

The platform is available in two flavors: Premium and Community. The community platform is free to use. The premium platform has some costs associated with it. What's the difference? Read on.

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What's the difference between the Premium and Community platforms?

The Premium platform is a super-set of the Community platform, and is available to partners. Note that both the Community and Premium programs leverage the same industrial-strength core back-end services. But generally, by partnering with us, you also get:
  • richer branding control, including customization of the Widget Home Page, email templates, and more
  • additional infrastructure services including domain blacklisting, domain-name mapping to match your own domain, and richer analytics
  • partners also have access to our Professional Services, with widget development, joint architectural design, and strategic consulting, and Premium Support
You can read the full summary of the premium partner program, and get in touch with us to discuss options, here.

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In 30 seconds, how does it actually work?

When using Launchpad On-Page:

  • You use a simple Javascript API to include a fully-customizable sharing menu in a page on your own site. This API lets you tell us about any arbitrary piece of content that you want to share.
  • Visitors to your site see the menu, and use it to interactively post your content to any one of a number of popular destinations and sharing services on the web.
  • You get detailed tracking on where your content is going, and how it is being spread, from your site and beyond.
When using Launchpad In-Widget:
  • You "register" your widget by giving us it's URL. Your widget can be Flash, JavaScript, HTML, or an image
  • We wrap your widget with a Clearspring container, which we serve from our back-end, that loads your widget in-turn. This container:
    • tracks everything that happens with your widget (and you can view it all in our analytics console)
    • offers a user interface and back-end that allows users to grab your widget and share it across the web (social networks, start pages, etc.)
    • offers some advanced programming features to the widget itself
    • loads super-fast
  • You can get the code for your wrapped widget from us and distribute it from your own site, or let users get it from our site (via a Widget Home Page)
  • You can use our platform to publish your widget to different widget galleries
  • You can use our platform to make API calls to interact with your widget, and to make your widget aware of it's surroundings
  • If you want, you can even load our APIs directly, be the first asset to load in a remote page, and more
This is a very basic high level summary, dive into the docs to learn more.

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Clearspring is not a widget gallery, and we don't expose the widgets on our platform directly for end-users. There are lots of great widget galleries out there already, many of which either grab widgets from our platform or that we push to directly.

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Does Clearspring help me actually build widgets?

For Premium partners, widget development is a part of the offering. For Community users, we offer templates, reference info and other resources to help you with your development project. Generally, we are focused on providing a great back-end platform that enables you to create modular apps that reach social networks, start pages, blogs, and more.

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Do I get support?

For anyone using our platform, we offer great, fast-turnaround tech/developer support through our forums.

For our partners, we also offer top-tier support through dedicated resources.

 

Technical Overview

How does it work?

See this FAQ entry or this more detailed explanation.

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Does Clearspring host widgets

No, Clearspring does not host widgets. For content registered programmatically with Launchpad On-Page, the content is passed from you through to the destination the user chooses. For Registered widgets, we provide an extremely high-performance (and possibly invisible, depending on how you have configured it) wrapper for your widget that gives it additional run-time capabilities.

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What is a "widget", as far as Clearspring is concerned?

To Clearspring, a widget is just a chunk of HTML, Javascript, a Flash SWF, or an image, designed to be delivered modularly and shared across the web. As the world changes, we will with it, so you don't have to.

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What is the difference between Launchpad "In-Widget" and Launchpad "On-Page"?

Launchpad On-Page lets you include some Javascript on your page to create a viral sharing menu that lets visitors to your site to get and share your content. Launchpad In-Widget let's you add a bunch of capabilities to your actual widget; API access, viral sharing, write-once, render anywhere, and more. See the introduction for more info.

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Does Clearspring support desktop widgets?

Yes!

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Do I have to do anything special when I build my widget to make it work on Clearspring?

Probably not. If you're using Launchpad On-Page or the Launchpad Library, you can share and track just about anything. If you are using the Simple version of Launchpad In-Widget, you should probably spend a few minutes and read up on our Container to be sure.

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Can I make a widget out of anything on my website?

Almost; there are a bunch of different options for what you can widgetize on your website, depending on what type of assets you already have. Check out this guide for some pointers and explanation.

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What widget-creation tools does Clearspring provide?

Clearspring offers some code libraries and templates that may help you with your widget development, though we're assuming you are building your own widget (unless you've contracted with us to build one for you). You might find that the forums are a good place to chat with other widget developers, or even to look for programmers or programming gigs. Everything related to actual development is in a specific section of the docs.

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How does this whole Parameters thing work?

Our platform enables you to dynamically manage parameters for your registered widget, injecting them at run-time. This lets your widget be more dynamic, since you're not hard-coding parameters into your embedded code. We also take care of prompting users to enter required parameters when they share the widget with someone or move it somewhere. Read all about it in the Tech Docs.

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How can I distribute my widget from my website?

There are basically two different options; you can embed the widget directly on your site, and allow users to grab it using the sharing services we provide in your widget, or you can use the Launchpad On-Page menu or button. You can read about all of the different ways you can distribute, or seed your widget, in our documentation.

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Which sites can I post my widgets to?

Clearspring-enabled widgets get viral sharing services built right in, allowing users to post to a number of common sites on the web with just a few clicks. You can see the full up-to-date list of these sites here, in our docs.

Users can always get code (an embed tag or similar) as well, so they can use that to post your widget almost anywhere.

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How can I monetize my widget, or serve my widget as an ad?

Clearspring offers a variety of solutions for advertisers, affiliates, and developers. See our micro-site for all the details.

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Technical Specifics

Is there sample code I can look at?

All of our API docs have sample code included, but you can also take a look at the examples sections of our docs.

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Can I change the way the Get & Share button that appears at the bottom of a registered widget actually looks?

Yes, check out this guide for a run-through of the process.

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Many of the widget galleries have a manual (or close) process to accept widgets into their systems. We publish your widget there, then they take over. Sometimes, the delay can be up to a week or two before you'll see your widget in the gallery.

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My widget requires URL arguments, can I use Clearspring to manage them for me?

The short answer is yes. See the entry How does this whole Parameters thing work.

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My widget requires FlashVars, can I use Clearspring to manage them for me?

The short answer is yes. See the entry How does this whole Parameters thing work.

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Do I need to make a new widget each time I want to change it's configuration (like for a media player)?

Nope, the configuration system lets you register your widget in our system once, specify its parameters, then manage the configuration changes. The platform will track your configuration parameters, then provide them to your widget at runtime. You can:
  • Let your widget be hosted in our Container, which will prompt users for appropriate configuration whenever they share your widget and pass results to the new instance
  • Use the Placement API to generate new placements with specified configuration values
  • Override parameters in the URL directly when referring to an instance of your widget inside our Container.
  • Use the On-Page API to put code right in your widget distribution site to share any configuration of any piece of content
  • Use the In-Widget API to put code right in your widget to share any configuration of any widget

Read the full details on configuration here.

There are cases where you actually will want to make separate widgets in our system, but the configuration mechanism can handle many of the most common cases (such as media players with parameters that control the actual media) without the need for creating new widgets.

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Are there APIs I can use from inside my widget, to make it do cool stuff?

Yes, take a look at the In-Widget API for all the details. You can do lots of neat things, such as get access to user information, location information, viral and spread history, and more.

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Can I get information programmatically about the site my widget is located on?

Yes, you can use the In-Widget API to get information about where your widget is located (and a lot more). You can get this info not only from within your widget by making API calls, but you can also get it passed to your server when the widget is loaded, so you can even control what your server does before the user even gets your widget content.

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Why do I see "Loading data from xxx.clearspring.com..." in the browser status bar?

Your widget does load components from Clearspring. However, there is a bug in the Firefox browser and Flash player combination that causes the status bar to display this message long after the data has finished loading. Note that this does not mean that your widget is continuously loading data from Clearspring, its just an out of date status bar message. Searching for this on the web will yield a variety of discussions on the specifics of the known issue.

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Troubleshooting

Why doesn't my registered Flash widget work right when loading it through the platform?

Are you having trouble getting your Flash widget to show up correctly, or work at all, when it's delievered by our platform? Here are some things to check:
  • Are you referencing _level0? Since our widget bootstrapper loads first, we're always _level0. See the Container requirements for details.
  • Are you using relative paths? You should absolute paths, since you're being loaded through Clearspring and not directly by your own site. See the Container requirements for details.
  • Are you relying on the Stage dimensions? When our Get and Share services are enabled, the Stage will be manipulated around your widget. See the Container requirements for details.
  • Is the Flash player earlier than version 8? The Get and Share menu will only activate on Flash player 8 or newer. This version combination represents a high-nineties percentage of all Flash deployments, so rest assured that this isn't a significant limitation on your widget's viral spread, and not that the core widget will still display and function correctly.
  • Is your crossdomain.xml file properly configured? If your widget is attempting to load any external data from a domain other than its own, note that Flash requires a crossdomain.xml file on that domain. This is a general Flash security feature, not anything specific to Clearspring, so be sure to check the Flash docs for more information.

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Why doesn't my registered Web Page widget work right when loading it through the platform?

Are you having trouble getting your web-page widget to show up correctly, or work at all, when it's delivered by our platform? Here are some things to check:
  • Are you including Java applets in your page? This will not work properly and is not recommended, see the Container requirements for details.
  • Are you including Flash objects in your page? This will not work properly, you should embed the Flash object as a Flash type widget instead. See the Container requirements for details.

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Why can't my widget load data, like an RSS feed, from a different domain?

If your widget is a Flash widget that is attempting to load data from a different domain than the one it was served from, you'll need to deploy a crossdomain.xml file on the server that has the data. This is a standard Flash implementation requirement, you can read more about it in the Adobe documentation.

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I used Launchpad tools to dynamically update or share my content, why does it look/act weird when I post it to site XYZ?

Not all destinations can handle the same type of content; some require Flash only, others allow Javascript, and others have still different limitations. For maximum portability, you can specify multiple versions of your content, or control which sharing services are available, when sharing your widget. With the Launchpad On-Page API, you can even specify multiple versions of your content for different destinations. Check out the docs for the details. You can also take a look at this table for details on which destinations support which types of content.

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Not all desktop widget platforms handle links the same way. To make your link-outs work properly on all desktop platforms, you should target them specifically (with a standard target attribute). For more information, see this page. If you don't do this, your links will likely not work.

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Why don't Vista desktop widgets display on the 64-bit Vista operating system?

At this time, Adobe does not support Flash on 64-bit operating systems. As our desktop widgets depend on Flash, this means they will not work properly on these operating systems. You can always disable desktop sharing for these widgets to avoid user confusion, if you'd like. Please reference this Adobe Knowledge Base article for details from Adobe on this.

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Why is my Launchpad On-Page menu not displaying, or displaying in the wrong position?

Assuming you are making function calls correctly, as per the On-Page API documentation, there are two things that might be causing an issue:

  • The DOCTYPE is not being set correctly for the page that is hosting Launchpad On-Page, as described here
  • The widget you are referencing, via a wid argument, does not actually exist

Why do the objects on my transparent-background SWF have shadows around them?

If you set your movie to have a transparent background, then enable the shadow, via the Widget Console, then all objects in your movie will be given the shadow. Generally, you can set an opaque background or disable the shadow if you don't want this functionality.