Experimental APIs Extensions for Chrome

A little over a month ago Google announced that their browser, Chrome, would not be able have extensions added to it. Extensions add to the functionality of a browser and allow the user to kind of customize their browser to their needs. Well last week a Google software engineer announced that there are a couple of experimental extension APIs that are being tested.

The first is a history API that allows developers to modify the user's browsing history. When the API is complete, develops will be able to replace the user's history with their own. The second API is more of a processes API. This API gives third party developers access to Chrome's process model, such as information on the CPU usage for each tab.

To me this sounds like it could be a security risk to home users but I know that Google does monitor extensions that attempt to access files from your computer. These APIs are available now in Google's Dev Channel and they encourage people to play with them a bit and then give some feedback.

Post can be found here at The Chromium Blog

Iteration 2

Well I had lots of hadacke trying to do different things for the personal project and realized it is quite difficult. I am not sure if anyone felt like me but I definatelly had hard time. So after playing with google maps, youtube, and so on, I realized that I really do not understand what is really happening. That is why I took an easier to comprehend approach by following the professor's RSS example. I knew that I can not use a pop up winndow that displays raw XML but rather I had to format it in a way to display it in my html page. So I have decided to find another blog and pull that information. Well again that was not an easy task.

Finding different blogs was easy, but just to make sure that my proxy file works I had to run it. Well in a lot of cases I was getting errors that I do not have permition to read the file, or file is not accessible. I am not sure if there was a mistake into my proxy php file or just those blogs had some restrictions. Well after a while I found out a blog that is in blogspot.com and also talks about APIs. How cool? The guys who participate in the blog are developers, so it was pretty interesting to find out some new cool ideas.

Well after getting my proxy php file working ok, I had to find a way to figure out how to pull the information I wanted and display it. Well this was the place with the most difficulty. I tryed to use button and different actions, but I never got any feed back from the proxy server. That is why I decided to go with what the profosor had. So I did reference on what he did. The next problem I had was in the names that I had put in into the drop box. I read the XML file and pulled just one name so I can see if my page would work. And it did not!!!! After a while I figured out that the name I was pulling was the actual author host blog. The actual name of the outhors of the blogs were different. So that was lots of hadacke for nothing. Anyways this is what I have so far

http://people.emich.edu/idimov/Iterat2/test1.html

Yahoo Mashup Developers

Calling All Mashup Developers…….Have You Heard The News??

Everything we are learning in Professor Drake’s class is sure going to benefit all of us in the future as there now is a new opportunity available for Mashup Developers. Yahoo just announced that third-party applications that are built by independent developers using their YAP (Yahoo Application Platform) will gain phenomenal exposure from over 330 million people that access their site on a daily basis.
All apps that are built using this platform can be accessed and installed by any Yahoo user. The example shown below demonstrates how this app would appear to the user. Currently there are over 400 applications already available.



There is an application platform developers guide available online at http://developer.yahoo.com/yap/guide/ which discusses various topics about the “Overview of the YAP Platform” to “Getting Started” , “Code Examples”, and finally “YAP Developer Services.” There are also blog posts for many of the applications from users that personalized their own pages.
Driving traffic to your site, acquiring new users and increasing awareness about your brand are just some of the many benefits you will receive as a mashup developer for Yahoo. Developers can also display ads and make additional revenue through virtual goods. In the near future, there will be additional opportunities available to increase your wealth.
When I first selected A-Z Wine Pairings on the sidebar I was prompted with a popup box that told me that I would be adding this to my homepage. Once I did that, I was prompted to sign in to my Yahoo account and saw a message like the one below outlining what information I would be sharing if I chose to allow this app on my own homepage.



So now you know, why we are required to complete IS449 at Eastern Michigan University, so we have a future as a Mashup Developer for Yahoo!