Yahoo's Design Tools
Written by: Doug Jenkinson
Article
Yahoo! just released their Design Pattern Library and User Interface Library, both of which are part of the Yahoo! Developer Network and look quite promising. Disclaimer: I haven't had the opportunity yet to check them out in detail, this is only a first impression.
The UI Library does contain a lot of functionality: animation control, a library to manage XMLHttpRequests, a DOM library, drag-n-drop functionality, and an event manager. Unfortunately, the library only contains three controls: a calendar, slider, and treeview; all of which have been programmed to death everywhere else on the web.
The Design Patterns library, on the other hand, looks far more promising. It gives us webdevelopers access to the wealth of experience the developers at Yahoo have learned while working with such a large, high-traffic site. Tips on breadcrumbs, modules, navigation tabs, pagination, and so on are available for integration.
In addition, Yahoo! has created two groups ydn-javascript and ydn-patterns for developers to discuss and learn. Not surprisingly, there's a blog too.
All in all, this does look promising. On the otherhand, there are already plenty of kits/frameworks/whatevers out there that do the same thing. This could be a useful tool if Yahoo continues to improve upon it. But it's not bad for a first step.
Revisions
- v1.0 (17 Feb 2006) - Article published.
