Building Web Hack Interfaces

Christian HeilmannUEL Hack Day

London, UK, October 2007

Building web interfaces is a fun task.

The technologies involved are easy to learn.

Text + Images + Multimedia

= Content

“What is it about”

HTML=

Structure“What is what”

CSS + Background images

= Look and Feel

“How should it be displayed”

Scripting and Extensions =

Behaviour“How should it behave and react?”

Playing each of these to their respective strengths

=great web products.

There is one thing to consider though.

BrowserOperating System

Screen Size Screen Resolution

Browser SizePlugins and configurations

Input DeviceReading Level

VisionLevel of Understanding

Motor accuracy

BrowserOperating System

Screen Size Screen Resolution

Browser SizePlugins and configurations

Input DeviceReading Level

VisionLevel of Understanding

Motor accuracy

UNKNOWN

Keeping this in mind makes you a true

developer for the web.

Be paranoid.Expect the failure.

Yahoo! has to do that day-in day-out.

People trust us with their data and use our

products to connect with other people.

This is why we hire great developers.

This is also why we use their knowledge to make

things easier for all.

Instead of constantly re-inventing we spy good

solutions and learn from mistakes.

The outcome of this research is available to

you!

http://developer.yahoo.com

Learn about:Design Patterns

PerformanceSecurity

Tap into the collective wisdom:

The Yahoo! User Interface Library

CSS Framework JavaScript LibraryWidget FrameworkDebugging Utility

CSS Components:–CSS Reset–CSS Fonts–CSS Grids

Making CSS layouts predictable and working across browsers and operating systems=

JavaScript Components:– DOM– Event– Connection– Animation

Making JavaScript development less random across browsers and easier to concentrate on the architecture of your scripts.=

Widgets:Panel Dialog Autocomplete

DataTable Slider Menu Calendar Colorpicker Tabview

Rich Text Editor

Creating HTML/CSS/JS based RIAs with tested and fully skinnable components.=

Debugging–YUI Logger is a cross-browser, cross-platform debugging console.

–YUITest is a unit and component testing framework in JavaScript

Industrial Strengthfor everyday solutions

Comes with full documentation,

examples, cheatsheets and quick start guides.

http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/docs

Others already benefit:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ydn-javascript/links/YUI_Implementations_001149002597/

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/ydn-javascript/links/YUI_Implementations_001149002597/

Newsvine, Opera, O’Reilly, Dow Jones Index, Paypal,

Slashdot, Digg, SugarCRM, VersionTracker,iFilm,

vBulletin, ebay

We also like to tell people about cool YUI stuff.

http://yuiblog.com

Play with our APIs and Feeds.

Answers Local Mail Maps Search Shopping Travel

del.icio.us Flickr™ MyBlogLog Pipes

Upcoming Webjay Finance HotJobs Traffic

Weather

Get SDKs to play with our applications:MessengerMusicSearchWidgets

What if there is some data you want to access but no API to get it in the

right format?

http://pipes.yahoo.com

… or hack what is out there.

Example: slideshare.net

Slideshare is a place to share presentations.

You can embed the presentations into other

web products.

There is an API, but there is no way to get all your latest presentations to have a “slide portfolio”.

However, there is an RSS feed with all the data I

need!

Battle plan:

Retrieve feedDisplay links to slidesGet the slide movies Write some script to show the movies when the links are clicked

<?php$url = 'http://www.slideshare.net/rss/user/cheilmann';

$ch = curl_init();curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);$slides = curl_exec($ch);curl_close($ch);$slides = str_replace('slideshare:embed','slideshareembed',$slides);$slides = str_replace('media:title','mediatitle',$slides);$xml = domxml_xmltree($slides);$json = array();$slidesharelist = '';$links = $xml->get_elements_by_tagname('link');$img = $xml->get_elements_by_tagname('url');$titles = $xml->get_elements_by_tagname('mediatitle');$embeds = $xml->get_elements_by_tagname('slideshareembed');foreach ($embeds as $key=>$el) { $l = $links[$key+1]->children[0]->content; $t = $titles[$key]->children[0]->content; $slidesharelist .= '<li><a href="'.$l.'">'.$t.'</a></li>'; $emb = $el->children[0]->content; if(strpos($emb,'<div')===false){$emb = $el->children[1]->content;} preg_match_all('/value="([^"]+)"/msi',$emb,$obj); $json[]='\''.$obj[1][0].'\'';}?>

<style type="text/css"> @import 'slideshareshowstyles.css'; #slideshareshowslideshow{background:url(<?php echo $img[0]->children[0]->content;?>) no-repeat center center;}

</style><div id="slideshareshow"><ul id="slideshareslides"><?php echo $slidesharelist; ?></ul>

</div><script type="text/javascript" src="http://yui.yahooapis.com/2.3.1/build/yahoo-dom-event/yahoo-dom-event.js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="swfobject.js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript">YAHOO.example.slideshareshow = function(){ var container = document.getElementById('slideshareshow'); YAHOO.util.Dom.addClass(container,'jsenabled'); var list = document.getElementById('slideshareslides'); var links = list.getElementsByTagName('a'); var displayContainer = document.createElement('div'); displayContainer.id = 'slideshareshowslideshow'; container.appendChild(displayContainer); var current = null; for(var i=0;links[i];i++){ YAHOO.util.Event.on(links[i],'click',show,i); } function show(e,i){ YAHOO.util.Dom.removeClass(current,'current'); current = this; displayContainer.innerHTML = ''; var so = new SWFObject(slides[i], "slideshareshow", "425", "355", "8",

"#ffffff"); so.addParam("allowScriptAccess", "always"); so.addParam("allowFullScreen", "true"); so.write(displayContainer); YAHOO.util.Dom.addClass(current,'current'); YAHOO.util.Event.stopEvent(e); } var slides=[<?php echo implode($json,','); ?>];}();</script>

http://www.wait-till-i.com/index.php?p=500

This is awesome! We are building badges for people to be able to display lists of their recent slideshows on their site, but it did not integrate the player. I love what you have done – well designed and well executed. I want it for my own site now.

I will post about it to our blog. And we will point to it when we release our own badges.

Thanks!rashmi(SlideShare cofounder)

Anything else?

per aspera ad astra

"through adversity to the stars" or

"a rough road leads to the stars"

per aspera ad astra

http://developer.yahoo.com/flash/

Get Flashing and Flexing

Christian Heilmann

http://wait-till-i.comhttp://icant.co.uk

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Thank you!