Eric Bergen

Growing up as a web developer it’s not very often that I get to enter the world of GUI applications or be able to write plugins to extend the functionality of existing applications. As more and more applications become dependent on the web for functionality they open up a world to web developers that we have had limited access to before. New applications are co-existing with the web using custom client side javascript objects. We can now write application plugins using languages we have been using for years.

I recently did just that. Yahoo Music Engine (free download) has become an integral part of my daily life. I use it both at home and work. Most of the functionality is handled by web pages that generate javascript to manipulate objects inside of YME. These objects are used to trigger functions like play and download. The API provides hooks for plugins to intercept calls from the application like searches and events related to currently playing music. Using these interfaces I wrote a plugin that runs entirely out of a single html file. It provides an AJAX style interface over Yahoo! News RSS. As the music changes the plugin grabs new news stories from rss and displays them. Check it out, and keep yourself InTheLoop!

If you feel like writing your own YME plugin the docs are very easy to follow and full of examples. If you get stuck or want to help other people join the ymedev group.