Quick refresher on developer guidelines

Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 10:58 AM

Posted by Lane LiaBraaten, orkut team

In order to deliver great apps to orkut users, the orkut team has put together some developer guidelines for you to follow. Being familiar with these guidelines will not only help your app get approved faster, but will also create a better experience for your users.

Here are a few common things we've asked developers to change after reviewing their submissions:

• Don't automatically post an update when the user installs or views an app.
• Remove all ads from the profile view.
• Be sure to use gadgets.util.escapeString to properly escape user input.

If your app is found to have policy issues, we'll contact you via the email address provided in the author_email attribute of the ModulePrefs element in your gadget spec (so be sure you're checking the account).

Another common issue we've seen is that some apps don't handle the case where the viewer hasn't installed the app. While your access to data is somewhat limited in this case, this is often a user's first impression of your app, so you want to make a good impression. If a user who has never heard of your app finds it on another profile and enjoys it, she is going to want to add it to her own profile and the trend will continue.

If you have any questions about orkut policies or best practices, the orkut developer forum is a great place to start the discussion.