The document discusses the Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) library and how the author initially dismissed it as bloated but came to appreciate its benefits for collaboration, cross-browser compatibility, and providing robust reusable components. It provides an overview of the key features of YUI including components for DOM manipulation, events, animation, AJAX, and design patterns. It encourages developers to use YUI APIs in their hacks and provides resources for getting started.

1. YUI – The Elephant in the room Christian Heilmann and Nate Koechley UK Open Hack Day – London – 16 th June 2007 [email_address] & [email_address] & creative commons by: 3.0

2. Following is a transcript of a chat I had a week before I joined Yahoo! a bit over a year ago. I had just finished writing my book on JavaScript.

3. [chris] Hey, I took the job at Yahoo in London! [friend] Congrats, so much for you coding. I guess now it is all YUI for you. [chris] Nah, I honestly haven’t done much with it, but what I saw seems a bit bloated, I guess for most of the stuff I will code my own scripts. It is an OK library, but I am not convinced.

4. Now I am standing here, talking to you about the YUI and why it is a good thing. What happened?

5. To: Mechanical Turk Subject: I can has beat-up for Chris?

6. To: Mechanical Turk Subject: I can has beat-up for Chris?

9. Pragmatism

10. Let me show you some of the things I spend money on…

12. This is our third Henry, … the first … lasted five years, the only reason it went was because it was used and abused but still worked. The second lasted about ten years went for the same reason as the first. Our last Henry was a bit of a disappointment it blew up after fifteen years but we have still purchased another one.

14. Air cushioned Resistant to Oil Fat Acid Petrol Alkali Steel Toes Perfect to wear on the tube

15. And this is what the YUI is. Industrial-strength solutions for every day problems If it works for our web sites it should work for you (or do you have more users?).

16. Using the YUI also means another, very important step towards producing big products. It takes the random element out of web development. Normally we have the following scenario:

17. HKR 1 Prod 1 Own conventions Own testing methods Own environment Own coding style Own sense of who uses the product

18. HKR 2 Prod 1 Own conventions Own testing methods Own environment Own coding style Own sense of who uses the product

19. HKR 3 Prod 1 Own conventions Own testing methods Own environment Own coding style Own sense of who uses the product

20. Prod 1

21. HKR 2 Prod 1 HKR 3 HKR 1 YUI Magic!

22. YUI allows simple collaboration by enforcing a strict namespace. This is what I considered “bloated” until I realized the benefits of it. Namespacing of the different YUI components and clever namespacing of your objects ensures readability.

23. YAHOO.util.Dom.addClass YAHOO.util.Event.getTarget YAHOO.widget.Tooltip YAHOO.util.DragDrop YAHOO.util.Connect.isCallInProgress All do what they say on the tin.

24. By coming up with your own namespace and sticking to it, you ensure that your code will play well with others. You can cut your applications up into several components and develop them in parallel without interfering. File size of your scripts can be easily reduced by minifying and gzipping the scripts – long names pack nicely.

25. The best thing: Readable method names = half a good comment Agreed namespace = understanding what your predecessors have done.

26. The next best thing: Submitted hacks should either use a BBC or a Yahoo! API.

27. The next best thing: Submitted hacks should either use a BBC or a Yahoo! API. yahoo-min.js is 1kb , gives you the namespace and satisfies this rule :-)

28. HKR 1 Prod 1

29. HKR 1 Prod 1 The INTERNETS

30. HKR 1 Prod 1 The INTERNETS DA DAH DUUUUUMMMM…

31. The INTERNETS are scary, as they mean: Different Browsers Different Assistive Technology Different Operating Systems Different Configurations Different Hardware

32. HKR 1 Prod 1 The INTERNETS 20% 80%

33. HKR 1 Prod 1 HKR 3 HKR 2 HKR 4 HKR 5

34. HKR 1 Prod 1 Secret YUI lair! HKR 3 HKR 2 HKR 4 HKR 5

35. HKR 1 Prod 1 Secret YUI lair! HKR 3 HKR 2 HKR 4 HKR 5 Battle And Tame The Internets!

36. HKR 1 Secret YUI lair! HKR 3 HKR 2 HKR 4 HKR 5 HKR Several hundreds in world-wide locations X

37. And now we need you to help us make this even better.

38. Photo Credits Numatic Henry http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicohogg/516490143/ Docs http://www.flickr.com/photos/davetron5000/276535342/ Elephant http://www.flickr.com/photos/euromagic/318774561/ Vic20 Game http://www.flickr.com/photos/lifeontheedge/84913291/ Chris and the babes: http://www.flickr.com/photos/72169999@N00/348839862/ Nate http://www.flickr.com/photos/freshelectrons/400135496/ Spaghetti http://www.flickr.com/photos/hikikomori/155256307/ Kitten http://www.flickr.com/photos/miller-lowe/346191736/ Puppy http://www.cuteoverload.com

39. YUI Goodies Industrial strength cross-browser JavaScript and CSS, free for all

40. The YUI Team

41. “ You bring the skills. We bring the ingredients.”

42. What’s YUI got?

43. [primitives] [compounds] [idioms] Connection Manager (Ajax) Event Utility Dom Collection Drag & Drop Animation CSS Reset, Fonts, Grids The Yahoo! User Interface Library Logger Control Menu Control Slider Tree Control Calendar Control AutoComplete DHTML Windowing TabView

44. DOM Utility Positioning HTML Elements Get/set Styles Client/Viewport/Doc Size Manage Class Names Regions & points

45. Event Utility Attach to one or many Auto-deferral if nodes aren’t yet available; execute onAvailable Auto scope correction (or assign) Can send objects Automatic listener cleanup Custom Events (pub/sub)

46. Animation Beautiful API Size/opacity/color/position/etc Bezier math

47. Good for spicing up hacks: Slider AutoComplete DragDrop Menu / Tabs / Trees Container Reset / Fonts / Grids

48. But wait, there’s more!

49. Design Patterns

50. Design Patterns

51. What happens when the mouse is pressed on the draggable object but dragging has not initiated? Storyboard Template for Drag & Drop

52. A full pantry web services & data + YUI (interface code) + Y design patterns -------------------- = tasty hack goodness

53. Getting Started

54. Wide-open BSD License

55. Free hardcore hosting http://yui.yahooapis.com/2.2.2/build/dom/dom-min.js http://yui.yahooapis.com/2.2.2/build/event/event-min.js http://yui.yahooapis.com/2.2.2/build/utilities/utilities.js http://yui.yahooapis.com/2.2.2/build/reset-fonts-grids/reset-fonts-grids.css

57. Three Versions of each File http://yuiblog.com/blog/2006/10/16/pageweight-yui0114/

58. À la carte Dependencies

60. Download full dist with all docs & examples http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/download/

61. Landing Page Quick Start Guides

62. Complete API Documentation

63. Examples and Tutorials

64. The YUI Cheat Sheets

65. ydn-javascript list

66. YUI Logger and Firebug alert(“stop the insanity”); YAHOO.log(“There IS a better way”); Debug with Logger or Firebug directly.

67. Things we’re proud of: Good page citizens We like javascript We care about accessibility and browser support

68. Graded Browser Support

69. Senior Architectural Leadership Douglas Crockford: “ Yoda of lambda programming and JavaScript” according to Brendan Eich (Inventor of JavaScript) Rasmus Lerdorf Father of PHP

70. Now Hack! And come find me anytime.