YUI Widgets

The YUI comes with a rich set of pre-built widgets, and implementing them also takes very little coding. Widgets such as Sliders, Grids, DataTables (with inline editing), Calendar, TreeView, and Tabs let developers easily incorporate advanced features into their projects.

And, if all of this was not enough, there is also a generous library of animation effects that can be mixed and matched to create an infinite number of possible outcomes, applicable to any visible DOM element. One neat effect that I have not seen in other frameworks is the auto scroll effect of the text inside of the textarea, either vertically or horizontally.

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Conclusion

In this article, I have covered the Yahoo User Interface (YUI) library in some detail. The YUI currently competes with other AJAX frameworks, such as Dojo, Backbase, or Scrip.aculo.us. Even though it is a free product, it has great documentation, examples and a lot of features. If you are looking for a solid AJAX framework to help with rich user interface development or just want to code some AJAX, the YUI can be a great start. It also will be interesting to see how the YUI evolves in the future and what features Yahoo or the open source community will introduce into it.

References

About the Author

Vlad Kofman is working on enterprise-scale projects for the major Wall Street firms. He has also worked on defense contracts for the U.S. government. His main interests are object-oriented programming methodologies, UI, and design patterns.