As Web and desktop applications merge, Yahoo doesn’t want to be left out of the Webtop party. That’s especially true as Adobe Air and Google Gears apps begin to gain some traction (for instance, see the MySpace-Gears announcement from earlier today). It turns out that for the past year Yahoo has been working on BrowserPlus, a browser plugin that lets developers add desktop-like features to the browser, including the ability to drag-and-drop items from the desktop onto the browser, manipulate Web images (crop, rotate, etc.), and receive desktop notifications. It works with Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer, on both Windows and Mac OS X. (More details here).
BrowserPlus is aimed at developers right now. The idea is that at some point Web surfers will download the plug-in, and developers will be able to tap into its browser extending features (through a Javascript library). The core feature of BrowserPlus apps is that they can be updated on the fly without the need to restart the browser. So developers will be able to add new features to their BrowserPlus apps and they will just appear in user’s browsers.
While all of this is exciting, the timing of the announcement seems odd. Not only is BrowserPlus not available for people to download (even in a private beta), . [Update: BrowserPlus is available for download for Windows and Intel Macs. I was looking at the site with an older Mac, and the download option was hidden from view—not even a notice saying "BrowserPlus is not available for your machine." Apologies for the confusion]. And developers are only getting a sneak peak. For instance, here are a list of APIs that it supports. But if they really want to play around with BrowserPlus before its official release, they need to send an e-mail to browserplus-feedback[at]yahoo-inc[dot]com.
Why is Yahoo making developers jump through hoops to play with BrowserPlus if it wants their feedback? The answer:
One of the restrictions of this release is that BrowserPlus can only run on sites operated by Yahoo! or its partners.
It’s just not ready yet.
Interesting stuff… and yeah, great timing also…
Anyone can download and play with it….it really is tons of fun…but watchout!
That’s already pretty nice, isn’t it? That freaking firefox just proceeds with an update installation it thinks fit without even notifying you or letting you cancel, and crashing often aftwards.
I’m using version v3.0b4, in case any firefox people care to know.
>without even notifying you or letting you cancel
without even notifying you to let you cancel
it does give you a notification box, but it won’t let you have any choice.
again, talking about the freaking firefox, not the yahoo browserplus
Obviously yahoo is flailing about trying to build up credibility in it’s renewed talks with Microsoft. Ozzie’s playing the game on his side, and Yahoo in typically disjointed fashion is trying to create the appearance of rapid growth in the 2.0 era and boundless potential.
What impact this will have on an undereducated (technologically anyways) board of directors and shareholders ala keeping Icahn and his barbarians at the gates away, is to be seen come end of July.
I would expect to see several more of these ‘an ok idea but uncorked too early’ stories in the coming weeks.
Why am I underwhelmed? I already have a FF plug in for drag_and_drop, and the other functionality in a few other apps I use. Redundant.
Why do I need to drag-and-drop items from the desktop onto the browser??? What is the purpose of this plugin? Is it something like iMacros to automate (script) web browsing?
I hate to ask this, especially since nobody is going to answer.
So as most of you know I am using YUI to develop our new jobs website.
So is YUI going to extend into browser plus?
Stuff like this seems ok (can’t hurt). Even if it doesn’t become a standard, maybe it’ll give some ideas on how to advance browser technology.
Drag and drop to browser is much needed.. that’s perhaps one reason (among other reasons) that box.net is using Flash for their online storage services. Drag and drop is important.
Its nice to see yahoo! Jumping into the battle with browser extenders on one side (gears) and site specific browsers on the other (bubbles,prism)
I use bubbles for facebook chat because of the notifications
Digsby, is probably the best Client I have used to integrate my IM, Facebook, Twitter and checking mails in one client.
Coming back to BrowserPlus, it will be much value add if it would let me do all those things with any Picture Storage service. About the Web Development feautres, they already have Y!Slow for Firebug, and I guess now they are trying something of their own in competition to FireBug. I like that, I love options. So that includes options to choose between other Add-ons that provide the same features.
Yahoo is now worth paying 100% premium for! Forget MS, let me grab my check book!
Yahoo is, again, late to the game. The best way to redeem tardiness is to take your time to release a polished product. Instead, they decided to prematurely release a crippled product and hope that the news and media will pick it up just because they’re YHOO.
Drag and drop is nice, client side manipulation of images is useful and desktop notification is well, OK. The real gulf between browser based and OS installed applications is the ability work when not connected to the network. Gears is the only HTML/JS solution that as does that.
As a web 2.0 application developer I don’t want to have a million platforms and my hope is that Gears and HTML 5 will converge and those of us who chose to do pure HTML/JS (as opposed to Flash, Silverlight or Java) will have a clear, unambiguous path.
Am I the only one who believes HTML/AJAX is just a dirty hack for building rich interfaces? The technology was never meant for apps, and it shows. We talk about how brilliant of the Gmail-guys for figuring out how to do gtalk in a browser via a “never ending pageload”, but my god, why does it take a genius to accomplish such a basic task to begin with?
I’m all for new ways to enrich the browser-app experience, because HTML/AJAX are totally stale technologies that are encumbered by turtling pace of the W3C. Part of the reason Flash is so successful was because the platform evolved so much more rapidly than HTML/AJAX.
> Am I the only one who believes HTML/AJAX is just
> a dirty hack for building rich interfaces?
Certainly not. They are dirty hacks. Flex and Silverlight are the way forward.
Iv just tried downloading it using my firefox browser. Does work!
Iv tried downloading it. It doesnt work.
Interesting development…
http://hackety.org/2008/06/09/.....rPlus.html
Looks like _why has dismantled it to run as a camping app in ruby.