Yahoo BrowserPlus Aims For Adobe Air, Google Gears
As Web and desktop applications becomes more resourceful and compatible, Yahoo does not want to be left out of the Webtop party. A year ago Google launched its Gears project — And now Yahoo wants to make your browser better, too.
In the midst of speculation about its mysterious BrowserPlus platform, Yahoo is offering developers and end users an online “sneak preview” of the emerging cross-platform software aimed at expanding the kinds of content that run on Web browsers.
Formulated over the last year by Yahoo programmers, BrowserPlus is Yahoo’s RIA (rich Internet application) for porting more desktop capabilities to Web applications.
The first demos of Rich Internet Application (RIA) platforms received another addition to a field already containing Adobe Air, Google Gears, and an assortment of startups like Pageflakes and Netvibes, as Yahoo gave people a look at BrowserPlus.
That is exactly true as Adobe Air and Google Gears apps started to gain some traction — for instance, recently MySpace-Gears announcement earlier this week.
Yahoo BrowserPlus allows users to tag, crop, and perform other sophisticated operations for a Flickr photo-uploading Web site.
“BrowserPlus is a technology designed to ‘extend the Web,’ so that developers can build more exciting Web applications and so end users can get more done inside their Web browsers,” Yahoo said on a BrowserPlus frequently-asked-questions page.
Yahoo’s BrowserPlus developers stated that they look forward to receive valuable feedback about the platform as they continue its construction. New features derived from that input should arrive and complement the current crop, which includes drag and drop from the desktop, image editing, and desktop notifications.
One of the present powers, a Flickr Uploadr, enables a few filters to play with through BrowserPlus. By selecting and de-selecting boxes, we could quickly render a picture of Disney World’s Cinderella Castle in grayscale and sepia tones. If desired, a sidebar allows quick addition of a photo to Flickr.
“BrowserPlus services allow us to chip away at the benefits of ‘going native,’ by exposing things like notifications, text to speech conversion, direct network communication, and persistent client side storage for saving preferences,” Yahoo said of the project as it becomes available to external developers.
BrowserPlus is intended to be run from the browser, while AIR lets users download Web-powered applications and run them on their desktop. Currently, AIR provides a complete runtime of APIs, analogous to an operating system or virtual runtime; BrowserPlus adds key services as they become available and necessary to extend the Web.
BrowserPlus also differentiates itself from Gears in the flexibility proportion because users grab Gears in one big download, while BrowserPlus calls Web services as Web pages need them. Gears also run in the browser space, which can cause browser crashes. BrowserPlus runs mostly in its own process space to ensure more stability.
Among its other capabilities: “Different Web sites can use BrowserPlus to support things like drag and drop from the desktop, easier file uploads, more efficient and secure acquisition of feeds and information, and native desktop notifications,” Yahoo said.
“The end result is the ability to write websites that can emulate a lot of the good interaction patterns available to native applications, without the sacrifices of traditional web apps.”
Adoption of BrowserPlus by developers and the applications they create will determine how it will be embraced by the general Internet-using public. BrowserPlus works on Windows XP/Vista with Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 and up, and on Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5 (Intel builds only) with Firefox 2 and higher as well as Apple Safari.
“The most unique attribute of BrowserPlus is its ability to update and add new services on the fly without a browser restart or even reloading the page!” contends the BrowserPlus Team in a blog post. “For users, this mans no more interruptions or installers to run. We handle the complexity of software distribution and updates.”
“For developers, it means you can check for and activate new services with a single function call (pending user approval, of course),” the post continues.
During the current sneak preview period, registered Yahoo users outfitted with supported browsers can explore demos such as a Flickr photo uploader, a browser-based IRC (chat) client, and a developer tool for exploring Web services output.
“In the meantime, Yahoo is also offering to developers test code samples, along with APIs for initially supported services.”
Ultimately, BrowserPlus is targeted at allowing Web sites to deploy applications that will set them apart, a goal that seems to dovetail nicely with Yahoo’s own recently articulated strategy of growing its series of Web-based Yahoo “starting points.”
But for now, BrowserPlus can only be used on sites owned by Yahoo or its partners. But the “first full public release will make BrowserPlus available to be used by third-party developers,” according to information posted on the Yahoo Developer Network Web site.