I have been working my way through the first tutorial and I think maybe i am maybe a bit ahead of myself but my intended application is to be a Vista/Windows 7 chat XMPP Gadget (which is just a web app really) and will run locally. Does that mean i will not be able to use flXHR without getting the end user to run tape and install python + twisted? As if thats the case then i will have to find another route :(

I am liking the book though!

flXHR is only a tool for cross-domain Ajax. It's independend of python etc. The only dependency is flash (and JS of course).

The confusion may be due to the fact that using Flash to access cross-domain http:// URLs requires that the application itself be served from an http:// URL, not a file:// one. Since most web devs test locally, this might catch them off guard. You can run a local web server of any kind (Tape is just a web server) to serve the files from a local http:// URL.

OS X has a suitable web server built in, but windows does not.