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Yahoo! Releases OSS Ajax and Design Tools
Cocteaustin writes "Today Yahoo! released the Yahoo! User Interface Library. This library is comprised of a number of dynamic HTML utilities and controls for building rich web UIs and Ajax applications. They are made available under an open-source license. In addition, Yahoo! released the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library. This collection of design patterns for Web interaction is intended to provide Web designers prescriptive guidance to help solve common design problems on the Web. Both are free in both senses of the word."
Just so you guys know, I don't socialize with "computer people."
Slashdotters: You are all a bunch of faggots.
Do you hear me, you repulsive faggots? NO DIGG.
awesomely generous. Hope there are no patent string attached.
So, while Google is expanding its new evil empire, Yahoo is courting indie developers? Strange days on planet earth...
Teeworlds - it's Super Mario Quake!
I tried out some of the JavaScript code they are offering. It is a nice library of functions for web application development.
I lost my signature... help!
"Patterns are optimal solutions to common problems. As common problems are tossed around a community and are resolved, common solutions often spontaneously emerge. Eventually, the best of these rise above the din and self-identify and become refined until they reach the status of a Design Pattern."
According to some. Some languages don't need "design patterns" because they don't have the problems the pattern is ment to fix.
With google's toys they all have mass appeal and drive traffic to the site, ultimately helping google's brokerage. This, while nice for some of us, doesn't. Why would Yahoo bother?
That's pretty incredible. Is this out of character, or did the folks at Yahoo! get sick of poorly implemented AJAX sites?
Both pages are clear and the library actually looks very good. Usually, Yahoo is playing catch up to Google, or so it has seemed. This time, Yahoo gets the upper hand. Google is becoming Yahoo, and Yahoo is becoming what Google used to be. Good stuff!
Not that any of this is ground-breaking, but it is a nice little package.
Makes Google's download package from last month look pretty lame.
The Yahoo UIL page and the Google Code pages are both useful and coincidentally look quite similar.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Yahoo has one of the least useful, most cluttered, and unappealing sites on the web. It seems pretty abusrd for them to claim to be releaseing "prescriptive guidance to help solve common design problems on the Web". Or perhaps they simply aren't practicing what they preach?
Yahoo are releasing this stuff under the BSD License.
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This looks like asp.net Atlas might be worth investigating though.
When it's a UI idiom...
And they even used teh BSD license.... im speachless...
This, while nice for some of us, doesn't. Why would Yahoo bother?
Simple, hearts and minds. Right now Google's #1 asset has nothing to do with their search engine, it has everything to do with the fact that they have (or had judging by recent stock hits) the hearts and minds of the public. It's all about the cult of personality that has grown around Google that allows it push as it has. For Yahoo to continue to be successful, they need to gain footing in this area. For them, releasing this can help take some of the steam out of the nerd love fest that is Google (ok, not a lot, but planting the seeds).
If you look through their Design Patterns you'll see that each has an Accessibility section. Very nice addition and often over looked.
-- taking over the world, we are.
This is good to see. Reuse for GUI widgets is one area where reuse has had an impact, in fact, GUI widgets are the most commonly reused components. There are a number of vendors for things like VB controls.
The components and patterns Yahoo has released will speed up the development of feature rich sites for other organizations.
FREE - Java, J2EE and Ajax Audiobooks for Software Developers - www.DeveloperAdvantage.com
There are some good snippets in there though, and Yahoo has done a good job of introducing code and web services to the developer community, much much more that Google has.
The design patterns are a very very good thing to expose. Although many of us might have been using similar standards, it sort of brings a number of them under one umbrella and into one place.
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I say, good show! As early comments have already noted it is indeed a strange month - in which Google is falling, losing popularity due to their stock prices and the whole China debacle, while Yahoo is rising, supporting OSS with a suprisingly useful package. I wonder if this is merely another bump in Google's ultimate victory or a shift in the paradigm, a potentially fatal one for Google. However, let this not take away from the original point of the article -- Congratulations, Yahoo!, and thank you. Your generosity will be remembered.
games journalism blog
This is a collection of, count em, THREE main scripts folks. There are free libraries of javascript code out there with orders of magnitude more DHTML functions and scripts. Sure, Yahoo offers some derivatives of each of their primary functions, but one of the categories is a collection of "vented menuing" scripts that could have been written five years ago. Only a multi-national company bent on branding (and yes Google, you're in the same boad) could put up a page like that and call it a Library.
To be honest, I'm consistently frustrated by the status of OSS code with regard to the DHTML components necessary to support open source RIA technology. If you want to do a vented menu, have a slider control, or YADDA you can find about 450 million scripts scattered across the javascript repositories of the web.
What it comes down to is this; if you want to do a collapsible menu or drag and drop then you're in luck, we have the widgets in OSS for you! OSS RIA won't be feasible until SVG stabilizes and is as ubiquitous as the Flash plug-in.
-rt
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
then Disappear3d a losing battle;
Now the wonderful Web 2.0 can really take off! I am so looking forward to a Service Oriented Architechture where Web Services can get a ground level understanding of my Ad Hoc Supply Chains! Why, I may design a Workflow to help me document and process my well-formed giddyness! Fabulous!
I particularly enjoy rubbing your noses in my towering intellect. On a personal note, I am an avid mustard enthusiast.
I for one welcome the new script (overlords), but I can't help myself (oh, and I tried) but point out that because of the nature of the technology (client side jscript) then there isn't actually a good way *not* to release the source code for re-use, at least for the Beer part.
Now I do think Yahoo has done a smart thing in doing this under a BSD license, but it's worth remembering that this might be because they don't really have a way to protect their IP anyway. You can muss up script to be less readable, but basically it has to execute and therefore scarf-up-able to those that want it.
If this was a server-side technology then I don't know if Yahoo would have been so willing to go both kinds of free? At the very least this messes with Microsoft's Atlas people's heads, so should be good to sit in the peanut gallery for this one.
Am I being too cynical for a Tuesday?
N/A
It breaks things on webpages and is really pissing me of on their my.yahoo.com site. If you don't need to drag and drop things, why have them? If you don't need to open a page in a new window, why do it? I'm starting to really hate some of this AJAX stuff.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
The animation systems are actually pretty awesome. The cacheTween() functionality in there takes it very close to what I've been doing with flash previously.
Morover, Y! has been using these for the past 6 months on different browsers before they open sourced. That part is really what most people look at.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
I sincerely appreciate the comments of those who know (much more than me) about web UI, techniques, technologies, and patterns. As a server-side engineer and developer, I don't spend a lot of time on the front end. It's nice to see how /.ers digest this type of information and re-present it from lots of angles.
With that said, I'd also like to say that the pages are pretty well done. It is obvious that a great deal of time and effort was spent conceiving, writing, and, producing these beginnings of libraries and instructions. I found the effort to be commendable and interesting.
For someone like me, these types of efforts actually help me understand quicker and keep me interested.
A Passionate Independent Musician
http://yuiblog.com/
The blog to go with the (future) releases.
The UI Controls all looked nice and worked very well in Firefox 1.5.
Unless there's a Grand Hatch (tm) that we've all overlooked, I'll start using this right away*!
So, thanks Yahoo.
*) In this particular comment, "right away" is defined as "tomorrow, or any other time I feel like checking it out".
Call me pedantic, but it's "Google Earth", not "planet earth".
I think my calendar is easier to use. And mine creates the div and checks to see if it already exists.
Someone now needs a UI Design tool that allows people to easyly integrate these into a design WYSIWYG mode.
Calendar foo = new Calendar('your_id');
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
Not really. Have you ever looked at their ads API? It can't even bgein to compare to what Google offers.
It takes about 90 seconds to sign up and start getting access to advertising data via Google's API. It's SOAP, so pretty much every programming language besides BASIC and Forth are supported. Google has loads of documentation online regarding their ad API program. And it's free. You get to do what you want with the data that you get back.
Yahoo has had an advertising API for 5 years now, but what does it do? What does it take to get access to it? We know it uses REST, but what data can you get back from it? How much does it cost? Where is the sample code? Is there a support forum where I can talk to other developers? What are the terms of service? Can I use it to get 3rd party access to others' data? Are there any other restrictions on using it?
The API page linked above doesn't answer any of those questions. Hell, the ads API isn't even listed on the developer resources page you linked to. Why is that?
So if I email xml-ysm@yahoo-inc.com and ask the above questions, how long before I get a response? Will all my questions be answered, or will I get more questions back then answers? Try it. I did last spring. It's an interesting response to say the least.
You're right in that Yahoo has some very nice developer resources. But this is one area where Google substantially outshines Yahoo. Send a short email to the above address and ask to get access to the Yahoo ad API. Seriously. Just send a one-liner. Take a moment to read through the canned response you get back. And then ask yourself "Why don't they just put all that info on a web page somewhere out in the open?" That you even have to email someone to begin with is odd (and annoying). What is Yahoo hiding? Why are they being so cagey?
Compare that email response to the AdWords API page at Google. Now step back and take in the Yahoo ads API page (and, I suppose the one other page regarding their API). Add in the email repsonse. Now take in all the info on Google's API. Notice a difference? Just a small one, maybe?
There's just no comparison whatsoever. Google is open, free and easy with their ads/cost data sharing. Yahoo is, to be kind, not so much any of those things.
Anyway, even if you DID manage to get API access, you better not hang your hat on that since access could get pulled for any number of spurious reasons. Take a look here for an interesting read. Yeesh.
Yahoo itself might have a decent suite of APIs, but such notions haven't as yet affected the folks who came over from Overture.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
This library is composed of a number of dynamic HTML utilities...
-SNS
...can't access a number of Yahoo! pages (nearly anything apart from their search page) due to a browswer restriction on Yahoo's end. I wonder if this extends to their other material.
Design Tools? Bah. Real men code by hand!
Doesn't even bother to link to a single one of the so obviously superior alternatives.
Looks like at least the slider examples all work in Firefox, Safari, and Opera for me. This is great news!
;)).
I think a standard JS widget library is a definite good thing, and with a company like Yahoo behind it it will probably get more developer awareness and traction with the business folks too than what's been available up to this point from smaller developers.
BSD licensed too, so it's free in any sense of the word for any use (good for us half-commercial folks
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Code:Example:
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Sorry, but I've been using the Backbase library for a while and Yahoo's stuff just isn't even close. I feel like I'm reading a thread about the benefits on attaching stone wheels to a wooden cart.
As I was glancing through the Yahoo docs I kept wondering... where is the XPath support for selecting objects, can I create HTML templates for my own custom controls, does it include lots of sample code/demos/pdf tech docs?
Also, what about a full-featured client-side debugger so I can see a history of AJAX calls (request/response), the current DOM tree in memory, and test out XPath queries and see the results?
Not even close... not even close...
Damn... ust after I had reverse-engineered and commented Google Suggest
You think I kid.
Isn't this great ? Yahoo! are giving us Free! Code!
Pity about the reporters they've shopped to the Chinese... They're probably quite uncomfortable right now. But hey, Free! Code!
Great libraries, beautiful examples. But perhaps they are still working on the Yahoo! Code Forge where these "libraries" get version numbering, changelogs, full API documentation, bug reports, etc.
Maybe nobody else cares about these things the Javascript, but they would never release server-side code in a generic, rootless ZIP archive. So much promise here, but I'd wait to see some better change management before integrating these libraries into a production site.
(Full speed ahead on development, though!)
Yahoo offers a lot more than google in certain aspects. Yahoo provides Geocoding ability to turn addresses into latitude and longitude coordinates in an xml file format. same with their local search.
they also produce a CSV sheet for stock quotes.
but google does have the advantage in interface. google maps does beat all competition for example.
Sounds like a nice set of tools.
8 109221%5E15841%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html
f irefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&q=yahoo+ch ina+dissident+email&spell=1
Too bad Yahoo is Evil.
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,1
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&hs=9r4&client=
THINK! It's patriotic
You're completely missing the point of what a design pattern is. A "Design Pattern" as you so charmingly capitalize it is NOT specifically this or that problem domain (it was ripped off^W^Wappropriated by the GoF from an architecture book that was over twenty years old, for christ's sake), but rather a set of common problems and solutions in any given problem domain.
So "UI idioms" are just as deserving of an attempt at the development of a pattern language as, say, object oriented wankery or building construction. Elitism about "my problem domain is more academic and abstract and uses more ten dollar words than yours" is lamer than lame.
The Design Pattern library is a fantastic resource for developers who want to do the 'right' (well, by Yahoo standards, anyway -- I find it very sensible at least) thing with their sites' user interfaces.
:)
I've forwarded it to the designers here at work, hopefully I'll start to see some good come of it in our interface design
It's seriously great to see this kind of thing happening.
.... But Google's had their AJAX Libraries opensource and available to the public for a LONG time (http://sourceforge.net/projects/goog-ajaxslt/). So Yahoo just got religated back to second-class. Nothing more to see here, move along. I for one, welcome my new google overlords.
This guy has recently found out a easy way of getting Yahoo avatars from yahoo servers directly into your webpage/blog! He has put up some samples here. He has also put up a complete article on how to do it here.