I am very excited about the new Y! Open Mail launched earlier this week! The platform is really cool and gives the users access to the applications built by developers around the world.
I think I really like the idea of opening mail platform to the developers as it’s a way to get into developers community. No doubt Y! is one of the largest email provider and developing apps for Y! Mail is a guaranteed way to reach the huge audience!
So if “apps in Yahoo! Mail” confuses you, then here is a quick description of what it is.
A platform to develop apps has been developed. This enables the developers to literally develop an application in the fastest way possible. All it requires is a bit of understanding of XML and some Javascript knowledge. I don’t think I need to say this but just FYI the apps are Ajaxified. There is a JS API developed to enable the creation and functioning of the apps. The api includes various methods that enables the apps to perform interactions like web service calls, integration with Y! Mail, Y! Calendar etc. The boundaries are unlimited well not literally, but the api is being constantly upgraded and is in a pretty good shape and functionality already!
Though not a 100% sure I think the process is developers develop the application using the platform, and send it to Y! for a paranoid approval (security review to ensure that there are no loop holes or security flaws in the app)! Once approved the app is open and is available to the mail audience to integrate it into their Y! Mail and use it!
Yes the idea is to open the platform to the public developers but not sure if a process for approvals and logins are already set!
But yeah way to go for Yahoo!
