Yahoo BrowserPlus SDK

Months ago, the rumor mill regarding the existence of Yahoo BrowserPlus triggered different inquiries by developers. Everyone who are familiar and enthusiastic about Ajax, JavaScript and other RIA development platforms is looking for clues on what BrowserPlus would really like. Then out of nowhere, Yahoo did released their BrowserPlus. Although the description regarding the upcoming development application of Yahoo is what everyone expects, certain features came in as a surprise.

Among the surprises of BrowserPlus is its being modular. Relying heavily on API, developers are able to piece together different functions offered by Yahoo so that they would have the ability to build powerful applications. The APIs offered by Yahoo are all based on JavaScript which also improves the performance of the developed application. No downloads required and updates are relatively easy do to its modular features.

The API is even a surprise itself. Although we've already seen impressive functions offered by Yahoo in Yahoo Pipes, Pipes are nothing compared to the brand new APIs offered by the BrowserPlus. Of course, the development application is not perfect yet as bugs in different APIs have been found. But the general consensus about the latest offering for Yahoo for developing applications is fairly positive.

But the development team of BrowserPlus is not done yet. Obviously developers are having trouble in dealing with the different APIs. Although the number of APIs is vast and impressive, it will never be enough since developers will always be looking for more. They would even prefer to build their own API if they have the chance.

Apparently, this was also in the minds of the BrowserPlus team. As a result, they started working (silently) on building an SDK. After a few months of toil, they are now ready to offer an SDK that was specifically built for BrowserPlus.

The SDK will help developers build their own applications and even API so that they could offer them to other developers for various purposes. As of this writing, the SDK for BrowserPlus is still in Alpha stage but they are now presented to developers so that more bugs will be discovered in a short amount of time. Hopefully, the time from Alpha to Beta and Stable release will be shorter than expected.

Aside from the new SDK for BrowserPlus, a new tool has been built by the BrowserPlus team that will complement to the programming application or could be used as a standalone application. Called the Zipper, this application could be used to further compress the files so that they could be easily uploaded and used in the application. Although there are thousands of applications that you can find with the same functionality, you will be able to use Zipper more efficiently when you are building APIs or online applications.

Check out their latest documentation on the latest offering of Yahoo. There are also tutorials and demos that are offered in their official website of BrowserPlus. This open source application should give you the chance to build applications that could easily rival and interact with your users' desktop.