Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 2:29 PM
Up until today, gadgets installed in the iGoogle developer sandbox had implicit access to social data, with no way for users to opt-out without uninstalling the gadget. We've added a feature to give more finely-grained control to users and allow users to explicitly grant or deny access to social data to their gadgets.When users install gadgets that use social data (indicated by requiring the OpenSocial feature), they will be prompted to give permission to access social data. If a gadget is released without social features and is upgraded, users will be prompted for access within the gadget when the new version is first rendered.
When OpenSocial gadgets are available to all iGoogle users, users must grant permission before gadgets are allowed access to social data. For sandbox users, we want to ease development, so sandbox gadgets are allowed access to social data before confirmation.
Developers, this is important, so take note. If users deny access to social data, the gadget should have a good error message and graceful fallback UI.
Check for the ability to access social data with this snippet of code:
gadgets.util.hasFeature("opensocial-0.8")
and fall back gracefully if permission is not granted.
If you have any questions, please join us in the iGoogle Developer Forum.
