Genius! And a little bit of competition for Adobe's Air, although BrowserPlus woprks directly in the browser. Nice! Can't wait for the public release, as this has really got my brain juices flowing.

Thank you for pioneering new web technologies

Well, I hope you can unite with Google and the Google Gears team on this. Otherwise we'll end up writing code to check for browser extensions instead of browsers, and then we are back in 1998.

As a Ruby developer I like the fact that you have a focus on that language (although I am sure you will support more in the future) but I have a few concerns:

1. Google is trying to do similar things (extend the browser) with Google Gears. Why not work with them instead of creating yet another thing users have to install.
2. Notice that you only support a few platforms. Your FAQ indicates more platforms will be supported later but will this always be the case. I.E. are the other platforms always going to be second place to if we want to use the latest features it is effectively a recent Windows or Mac only product?
3. You say you require user approval before allowing insecure actions but isn't this how we got the ActiveX mess. Users click "Yes" without really considering what it is asking exposing their computer without understanding they are doing so?

While I will certainly keep my eye on this there are many concerns here from my perspective.

Hi Eric,

In terms of your second question about covering more platforms, we tried to respond in our FAQ: "Extending the breath of platform support in BrowserPlus is a key goal, and we will continue to extend it to run in more places." This is meant to convey that we care about widespread platform support, and we're going to work toward that goal.

In terms of your third question, it's an excellent point that we've wrangled with a bit. Each service presents unique security concerns, and prompting the user is a "last resort tool". There are some places where we have better mechanisms available to us, such as the opaque file handle representation (http://browserplus.yahoo.com/docs/samples/?s=drag_and_drop)
that lets us rely on user interaction as a form of implicit permission
(very similar to the model of the browse button today, non-spoofable user interaction
indicates consent, and the actual file selected is kept out of reach
of untrusted javascript).

thanks for your thoughts,
lloyd

In "Extending the breath of platform support . . . "

"breath" should be "breadth."

What about Eric's first question? I really like to know your reasons. some years will be passed and developers feel confused about provided platform and ...

Is some documentation for developers available yet? It is hard to see the potential without docs. Could only find few examples on browserplus site. thanks!

For docs: The published sample code is the extent of what we have available today:
http://browserplus.yahoo.com/docs/samples/

As for the Gears question, we're already cooperating in the sense that we all are working to advance the web!

best,
lloyd

You want me tell you what sucks?

The main thing that sucks is that you are not doing this as an open source effort with Gears. If you started a year ago (directly after Gears was launched) why didn't you just join that open source project? It is clear that BrowserPlus is trying to solve the exact same problems (although it is as proprietary as Flash) without even trying to make this play along with HTML5. PStorage is solving the same issue as HTML5 storage with a new API. You should follow what Gears is doing with Database2.

I'm sorry if I came across a bit negative. BP seems pretty good. It is a shame that it was done in a dark room without any clues what was going on outside that dark room ;-)

"As for the Gears question, we're already cooperating in the sense that we all are working to advance the web!" -- in the same way Microsoft and Adobe are cooperating with Silverlight and Flash.

Alright, obviously that answer was unsatisfying. Let me try one more time...

At the time Gears was launched, it was a tool to take websites offline. A very good tool. In recent months Google and the Gears community have shifted to the more general goal of extending the web by implementing tools that people can use today, low level building blocks with wide appeal - the stuff that standards are (eventually) made of. I'm delighted by this expanded goal because I think it's important work. Contrasted with BrowserPlus, at the time we started, and today, we're focused on fixing a different problem: Plugins should be easier to write and available in more places. This is the case we're trying to explain on our homepage with the word "playful": "Being playful means that some of the APIs we publish may not be useful to a large audience, but they will be fun."

While there are many undeniable similarities, and media typically emphasizes these elements to build a compelling story of competition, there are also some very important differences. For me it's not clear that "BrowserPlus is trying to solve the exact same problems", and I think the overall movement is much more powerful if you consider the combined goals of the two approaches.

It is my sincere hope that as we continue to open the platform the important, distinct, and in many cases complimentary features of all of these tools will become clearer. I understand the natural tendency to explain technology through comparison and analogy, but I think in this case it may be muddling the conversation.

Don't get me wrong, installing ten plugins to use a website sucks. I totally agree. BrowserPlus itself is an attempt to address this problem.

Finally, we should continue to criticize fragmentation, perceived or actual, to keep ourselves honest and focused on the people who matter: developers and end users. We asked for and value this feedback: it's the primary reason we released a Sneak Peek.

very best,
lloyd

I am a developer from AccuWeather, and we are very interested in developing an early application for the browerplus platform. However, we submitted a yahoo widget to that gallery weeks ago, and we have not heard anything about the approval. Are you going to be supporting browerplus more than yahoo widgets? Also, do you know if there is a problem with gallery approvals as we would really like to have our widget out there.

Thanks Lloyd. I'm sorry I came off so harsh. BrowserPlus has some nice features but I still believe that making this an open source project in collaboration with Gears would be a better path for the open web.

What I fail to understand is, why Intel Mac only? This is not ASM code or SSE3 code, it is ruby!

Rick: we'll support browserplus the best we can, and I'll forward on your issue.

Erik: No worries, it's an important question that a lot of people are asking

llgaz: Platform breadth will improve!

Yeesh, we're bending the whole "blog" idea here :)

lloyd

Ignore all of the "there can only be one" people. Develop your own thing, and the best will rise to the top.

hello, i m from india interested to development of yahoo global business leadership so that i can earn money huge, thanks

By joining with msn, you can introduce any new features to increase your visitors...

I have ZoneAlarm (free) firewall. What settings should I make in ZoneAlarm - Access: Trusted/Internet, Server: Trusted/Internet
Look forward to your advice as I frequently attach files and I am worried about security of BrowserPlusCore
Peter

This is plain wrong.

Can you say "standards"? Ever heard of W3C? I am not making a point that your newly born application violates a specific standards regulation, rather stating that the entire concept of "extending" the browser with proprietary technology is "wrong" -- make this "bad", or better, "evil".

Let me explain – a quote from your official BrowserPlus site: "anytime new software comes to you from the web, you should be paranoid". YES, I am.

I was in a terrible rush in sending a scanned file through someone else's Yahoo email account, and had to do it FROM MY MACHINE. Given the rush, and being convinced that web stuff can't possibly run code on my machine (this is why I dropped off IE in the first place, and started to use Firefox: again, can you say ActiveX?) I quickly clicked on some "Yes-I-don't-know-what", and within seconds, something was installing on my machine, smoothly and silently, WHY? To send a bloody PDF file from my laptop to the Yahoo servers.

Hey, Yahoo, have you gone nuts, people? Have all of us gone back before the dawn of the Internet? When, in order to do anything useful from within your browser one had to install this or that "browser extension"?

We DON'T need browser extensions. Extending the browser is wrong and evil, because is proprietary, is non-standard and is throwing away some precious history behind us: in short, what that history has to tell, is that some software seniors have been tackling for years the problem of securely coupling the web to the desktop. And that they eventually came to implementing their findings in software we regularly know as “browsers”.

Let's take good old Firefox (or should I've been saying “Netscape” instead?) and good old HTML. First is essentially 15 years old, second has about 18 years passed from its first prototype. There actually is a highly secure way of uploading files from someone's machine to the web. It's done via the HTML INPUT element. By setting its type to "file" and placing it inside of an FORM element it does a wonderful, overly tested and reliable job of picking a file from someone's computer and sending that bloody file away! It took more than a decade to have related code working the way it does today. More than a decade, just for selecting a local file and sending it to the web, and do all this is a secure, flawless way! More than a thousand of people involved (do consider the open source phenomenon).

My point? I can't -- nor wish to – just ignore all that in favor of a handful of enthusiasts which have gathered "in a dark room" and have made a nifty DESKTOP application that INSTALLS on end-user machine and can be CONTROLLED via a web browser (DO read again my last phrase, isn't it scaring you to death? Good Lord, it does scare me). And what have I gained, overall? A progress bar.

Well, I could go on saying, but I guess my personal blog will make much better an option for it.

My last line is: extending the browser to gain more control over user's desktop is definitely not the way to go; browsers must be standard, web technologies must stay standard, the time of proprietary software on the web has all gone.

Now, if you excuse me, I must uninstall that unsolicited software Yahoo has slipped into my computer.

Have a nice day,
C

Awesome, an unsolicited program installs itself on my computer and I'm supposed to be happy about it? I don't think so. You can keep your spyware Yahoo, Im going back to GMail.

To add to the previous post.I am a part of a team which manages over 8000 users in 70 sites. These users are not allowed to install unapproved software as they all are restricted by using GPOs. Lo and behold we have been receiving calls from onsite technicians informing us of your 'Browser Plus' software being installed on workstations without UAC prompts. What is happening here. Why is this software being installed so secretly. What privilege is being used. I have to investigate this further. I am surprised that you guys at yahoo would develop a programme that would clearly violate windows security. Please shed some light on this.

I've been with yahoo for over 10 years now on different e-mail addresses.

I recently complained about the new version of Yahoo mail being slower then ever before. It gets stuck more often, whole mails typed get lost and need to be typed over... I've returned to the first putting them in word and saving them before copy-pasting them in yahoo, policy.

Now I'm discovering software on my P.C., get into a fight with my wife over whether or not she installed this crap, only to find out it was dumped there secretely by some people who deem to know what's best for me?

If I read everything Claudius and Solomon write, I have to say... this was it for me. I'm changing my mail address away from yahoo.
Annoying as it may be, I've had it with yahoo.
Also I'm sending these remarks as an attachment along with my "Change of address" mail, so everyone I know is warned.

Too bad... It was good as long as it lasted.

This rancid code bogged down my entire OS (OSX 10.6,w/ FireFox 3.5.3). Figures as soon as this "Yahoo" was absorbed into the Microsoft empire, they start loading crapware onto my computer. It took weeks to figure out why my 64k system was running like Win98. I have finally found it and sent it back to hell where it came from.

I think it's time I really utilized the Google services and ditch this warmed over Bing/MSN.

Sad to watch whats left of this company degenerate into another poorly conceived and highly disposable Microsoft side project

Hello

we have implemented yahoo browser plus powered drag and drop upload on our file hosting site as another way to upload to our service

Thank you very much yahoo! for this great plugin

Cheers

It is a useful browser plug-in. I am already benefiting from the fact that I can "finally" select multiple files to upload in Yahoo Mail at one go. BTW, it installs only if you approve its installation (for IE7 & 8), I do not understand why people are complaining. Good job Yahoo.

Jamal Olugosch

I recently installed the yahoo! browserplus and I can't uninstall the program. I've tried everything I can think to do and it still keeps saying "bpuninstall.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience."
I just want it off my computer.
-Jessica Boykin

Hi There Jessica,

A couple people have reported similar issues, and while we don't understand exactly what's gone wrong, here are manual steps to remove the software completely from your computer: (see post #2 by gordon, my colleague who also works on browserplus).

http://developer.yahoo.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=3371

Hope this helps!
Lloyd

please get this crap off my computer....NOW, it has screwed everything up