Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Yahoo Application Platform Release 1.9

A new release of the Yahoo! Application platform is now live on the Yahoo! homepage; on My! Yahoo!, our personalized start page; and on apps.yahoo.com!
Check out the updated apps management page where you can now browse and search for your favorite apps. Developers should note the improvements to our existing sharing flows: users can now share their apps with their contacts and their connections, leveraging their Yahoo! Address Book and enabling the entry of free-form emails. Check out the docs for yml:message to learn more.
Have a look here at some of the highlights of this release. Complete release notes will be available on the YAP documentation pages later this week.
    Updated “My Apps” page:
  • Check it out: apps.yahoo.com
  • New nav bar for the canvas page and the my apps page, users can now go back to their list of apps from the canvas page.
  • Users can now search and browse apps on apps.yahoo.com.
    Updated share flows:
  • yml:message, yml:share and the chrome share (the share button on apps.yahoo.com in the app chrome) have been updated.
  • Users can now share their favorite apps with contacts in their address book and enter free form email addresses.
  • Why is this a big deal? If an application can access a user’s Yahoo! Address Book, developers gain immediate access to an existing social graph, and don’t need to rely on the user to build out a social graph in order to share and extend the app.
    Improved experience and integration on Yahoo! homepage:
  • Users will now be able to stay in context when interacting with a YAP application on the Yahoo! homepage.
  • Developers who use yml:a in their small view will automatically get this benefit, enabling behaviors like switching the user from the small view to the full view and enabling the user to stay in the homepage when interacting with yml:a links.