Yahoo! User Interface Blog (YUIBlog)

In the Wild for October 5, 2009

It’s been a busy month here with YUI 2.8.0, YUI PHP Loader 1.0.0 beta 1, and YUI 3.0.0 all hitting the wires — and with our first public YUI developer conference, YUICONF2009, in the works. Here’s some of the recent news from the larger YUI community; let us know in the comments if we missed something good.

• Matt Snider Writes About His YUI Storage Utility: Matt Snider from Mint.com has a nice article on his personal blog about the YUI Storage Utility, a component that he contributed for YUI 2.8.0. 
  
• YUI 2 in Use on TwirlTV: Former Yahoo Adam Platti (one of the original Oddpost engineers) is hard at work on TwirlTV, which is out in beta and making extensive use of YUI 2.  Writes Michael J. Miller of PCMag: “[TwirlTV] may have been my favorite consumer application [at Demo09]. It aggregates the bulk of the free TV sites on the Web, including all the major networks, into a single user interface designed to work more like a TV, with a full-screen view. It lets you set up the shows you want to track, and more important, it lets you share your TV-watching habits with your friends on Facebook. While it is only showing you the same videos that are available on the individual TV brand sites, the interface is very nice; and people will like the sharing features.”  Congrats to Adam and the team on the launch.
  
• YUI-based Mac Desktop Implementation by Kerasiotis Vasileios: Kerasiotis Vasileios recently wrote up his experience creating a Mac desktop-style interface using YUI 2: “When i first saw jQuery desktop i was amazed of what jQuery can do. I decided to ‘fork’ the idea to YUI and check if it was possible. It took me 2 days to built it from scratch (well not actually, because most of the functionality was taken from the YUI library examples). For example the panels, dialogs and menus are all taken from the examples provided with the full YUI library, but I think I did some work myself.” Yeah, it looks like he did quite a bit of work — and the result makes for an interesting study. Check out the live demo to try out his code.
  
• YUI 2 CSS Tutorial from Mike Sweeney at WebSqueeze: Mike Sweeney has a nice tutorial on the YUI CSS tools up on WebSqueeze.  Mike writes: “Any good UX designer will tell you that one of the keys to making your website easy to use is consistency. Your goal should be to not make users use more than the necessary brain power it takes to understand the point you’re trying to get across. People are used to seeing sites designed in certain ways and the YUI CSS Framework covers these basic design patterns without having to make you think too hard as well. Everybody wins.”  Check out the full tutorial here.
  
• YUI Compressor TextMate Bundle: You may think of YUI Compressor as a build-time tool, but sometimes you want the convenience of running it right from with in your editor.  If your editor is TextMate, the massively popular Mac OS X code editor, you’re in luck — enter the YUI Compressor bundle for TextMate.
  
• Stephen Woods’s YUI 3-based TimePicker: Stephen Woods, our friend and colleague at Yahoo!, is working up a sweet little TimePicker control based on YUI 3.  The code is up on GitHub for all to enjoy. (Original source.)
• Custom YUI-based Carousel and More on DealNews.com: Brian Moon wrote in to tell us about his YUI implementation on DealNews.com, which includes a custom carousel component supporting features like variable-width items. (Original source.)
  
• YUI PHP Loader Support for VBulletin: User ragtek on the YUI Forums has been playing with the new YUI PHP Loader project in his vBulletin implementation.  Writes ragtek: “I’ve coded a add-on which implements the yui php loader into your board. So it could be easier for add-on coders to insert the needed files.  The second benefit will be, that all components will be inserted only one time, instead of 2,3 (like i’ve seen on some boards).” (Original source.)
• Dylan Oudyk’s MatrixAnim Using CSS Transform Matrix: Dylan Oudyk wrote in to tell us about his MatrixAnim class (based on YUI 2.7.0).  “I did a write up on supporting a css transform origin in Internet Explorer through some script workarounds. I also wrote a MatrixAnim class deriving from YUI 2.7.0’s Anim class for animating elements using a transform matrix.”  The example page allows you to play around with a few of the animation methods that he has working. (Original source.)
• GWT API for YUI Carousel Integration: The groovy YUI Carousel, which got even groovier in YUI 2.8.0, is now more accessible than ever for GWT developers thanks to Nicolas Hoppenot’s Apache-licensed project gwt-yui-carousel project.
  
• CNet Coverage of YUI 3 Launch from Stephen Shankland: Thanks to Stephen Shankland at CNet for the great coverage of the YUI 3 launch.  Writes Stephen:  “Compared with YUI 2, the new version is smaller, faster, easier to program with, and more secure, Yahoo said. It’s easier to break code into minimum-size pieces through a dependency configurator or YUI’s ability to download required components on its own. Also, Yahoo is working to add widget abilities for creating small programs. A convenient YUI feature is that Yahoo is willing to host most of it on its own servers, saving hassle and Web server bandwidth. The new version is the first ground-up reworking of the software since 2005. No doubt YUI will be the subject of discussion at Open Hack Day and YUIConf, both in October.”
  

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