Yahoo for the Masses
Christian Heilmann | http://wait-till-i.com | http://scriptingenabled.org
Bangalore, India, Yahoo internal training, February 2009

This is going to be an
interactive session, so don’t
feel bad for asking questions.

Yahoo is a big company with
a lot of products.

As a representative of the
Yahoo Developer Network I
talk about the YDN and our
developer products in public.

I don’t speculate about
products we have or our
stock price or what’s
happening to the company.

And neither should you. This
way trouble and annoyance
lies.

So let me introduce the way I
like to portrait Yahoo in
public.

I see Yahoo as
the big friendly
giant.

Just like the big friendly giant
we take the nice things and
bring them to the people.

And we keep the bad things
away from them.

And we have to constantly be
aware of the other giants out
there...

...as the people we talk to
have an almost unhealthy
drive to ask us how we
compare with other giants.

As a matter of fact there are
more and more big friendly
giants out there.

So baiting me to say bad
things about the others is a
waste of time.

As it should be with you.

Let’s go through some of the
offerings we bring the world
that get me excited.

Design
Patterns

On the Yahoo Developer
Network you can find
solutions to tasks that users
need to fulfill on web sites.

These are based on research
with real users and are live
and cross-referenced on
Yahoo! sites.

All of them explained in
detail and licensed Creative
Commons.

http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns

This can be a base of your
own interface and
information architecture.

They even come with stencils!

http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/wireframes/

YUI CSS

Basing your design and
layout on an existing CSS
framework means you can
build them very fast.

It also means they work
across different browsers and
will work for browsers to
come.

In terms of maintenance all
you need to do is to update
one CSS file.

http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/grids/builder/

Exceptional
Performance

Using our exceptional
performance tips and tools
you can make your sites work
faster and more smoothly.

Faster and smoother
experience = happier users

Exceptional Performance Tips:
http://developer.yahoo.com/performance/
YSlow:
http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/

And of course smushit.com

YUI

YUI is a base to build working,
accessible and easy to re-
style web applications on.

Working for us and thus
probably working for the
world out there, too!

YUI makes web development
more secure, predictable and
backed by a massive
community of clever,
dedicated developers.

YUI also extends your web
app capabilities.

What if HTML is not rich
enough for your clients?

Almost all *free* and *big*
JavaScript libraries come
with widgets that work and
are proven in the market.

http://ui.jquery.com/
http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/
http://ui.jquery.com

BOSS

What if a client asks you to
build a specialist search?

You could buy databases and
build an interface and get
servers to host and index the
search...

Or you could use BOSS.

http://developer.yahoo.com/search/boss/

BOSS allows you to build
better search results easily.

http://ask-boss.appspot.com/

http://ask-boss.appspot.com/

Another cool thing BOSS does
right now is provide a
mainstream channel for the
semantic web and
Microformats.

People are trying to make the
web a less messier place by
adding semantic data to HTML
documents.

Using
SearchMonkey
technology
BOSS now lists
this
information in
the results.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/glenscott/3273401181/

view=searchmonkey_feed
view=searchmonkey_rdf
http://developer.yahoo.com/search/boss/
structureddata.html

Another interesting thing is
the keyterms parameter in
BOSS.

http://keywordfinder.org

Yahoo
Theater

Videos of talks, presentations
and product demos to watch
and use in your own
company’s training program.

Yahoo
Theater

Security

Yahoo has a good security
section on YDN.

We should do much more
there.

Accessibility

There is some information on
the YUI blog about all the
good accessibility work we do.
http://yuiblog.com/blog/category/accessibility/

There will be a full
accessibility section on YDN
( which is on my plate ;) )

YQL

YQL is a SQL-style interface to
all Yahoo data – and the web!

I like to call it the tin opener
of the web – even when the
juicy data is in a container
you can get access to it.

Especially now that we allow
for open data tables.

This allows any company or
institute or web site to allow
people to access and mash up
their data.

For example a friend of mine
works for the National
Maritime Museum in London.

They are already part of the
Commons on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/people/nationalmaritimemuseum/

He wanted to allow people to
access their free data and
filter it without providing an
API.

All it needed was a simple
XML file.

<?xml version=\"1.0\"?>
<table xmlns=\"http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/schema/table.xsd\">
<meta>
<author>Jim O'Donnell</author>
<documentationURL>http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/</documentationURL>
</meta>
<bindings>
<select produces=\"XML\" itemPath=\"rss.channel.item\">
<urls>
<url>http://www.nmm.ac.uk/collections/requestHandlers/
doQuickSearch.cfm?
searchterm={searchterm}&amp;authority={authority}&amp;category={category}&
amp;startrow=1&amp;format=rss</url>
</urls>
<inputs>
<key id=\"searchterm\" type=\"xs:string\" paramType=\"path\"
required=\"true\"/>
<key id=\"authority\" type=\"xs:string\" paramType=\"path\"
required=\"false\" default=\"category\"/>
<key id=\"category\" type=\"xs:string\" paramType=\"path\"
required=\"false\" default=\"\"/>
</inputs>
</select>
</bindings>

http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console/?q=use%20%27http%3A%2F
%2Featyourgreens.org.uk%2Fyql%2Fnmm-search.xml%27%20as%20nmm%3B
%0Aselect%20*%20from%20nmm%20where%20category%20%3D%20%27art
%27%20and%20searchterm%20%3D%20%22tower%20bridge%22

This is just the start. I am
really excited about YQL.

A good BFG also
should listen
well.
And this is where
we are not doing
a good enough
job.

I’ll need all of you to see
what’s going on out there.

Find good examples of uses of
our technologies, and tell the
YDN folk about it.

We’re happy to tell the world
who has done good stuff with
our stuff :)

On the other hand we also
need to know how people get
stuck and what they would
like from our products.

So whenever you are out
there and you hear people
having issues...

...point them to the right
channels.

Help is there, we are a BFG.

THANKS!
Keep in touch:
Christian Heilmann
http://wait-till-i.com
http://scriptingenabled.org
http://twitter.com/codepo8