building web hack interfaces
DESCRIPTION
A presentation for Dundee University's Hack Day explaining the technologies to use and how to hack your own APIs by using Yahoo! Pipes and scraping RSS feeds.TRANSCRIPT
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.
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?
… 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>
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!