OStatic

Yahoo announced yesterday that it was releasing version 2.6 of its popular Yahoo User Interface (YUI) library, a collection of JavaScript objects and functions for client-side Web programming. YUI, distributed under the BSD license, is similar to such open-source JavaScript libraries as jQuery (see related story), Dojo, and Prototype/Scriptaculous. Note that this release is not the same as YUI 3.0, a preview of which was released earlier this year, and which will not be backward compatible with version 2.x.

Development of YUI 3.0, the latest version of Yahoo's User Interface toolset and widgets for Web development, is now available as a preview release. YUI has long been a popular choice for client-side Web development, both because of its liberal BSD license, and because of the number of features that the library includes. YUI 3.0, when it is released, will offer a variety of new JavaScript classes and widgets. However, this will come at a price, namely compatibility with YUI 2.x APIs.

Client-side Web developers work mainly in JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, displaying and manipulating data within a Web browser, while retrieving and storing that data on the server. One exciting new entry on this front is SproutCore, a new JavaScript framework that brings a full model-view-controller (MVC) approach to client-side programming. SproutCore gained a great deal of public attention in the last week, since Apple announced that its new MobileMe (formerly .Mac) service uses it.

Are you using Ajax in your web application? If so, then you're probably using an open source JavaScript library, as well. Google announced earlier today that several popular JavaScript libraries, including Prototype and Dojo, will be freely available for web applications to incorporate in their HTML pages. By using Google's Ajax API, applications will be able to benefit from Google's fast content delivery network, as well as from the fact that browsers cache JavaScript files. So if any other application uses Google's copy of Prototype, your application will be able to used the cached version, saving time and bandwidth.