The BrowserPlus Developer APIs

BrowserPlus™ is an open source dynamic plugin framework that makes it possible to rapidly extend the browser programming environment with new javascript APIs that afford secure access to desktop facilities. This site contains code samples, tutorials, and formal documentation for the platform.

Once you have an understanding of the basic usage of the platform, the Service Explorer allows you to explore and execute the APIs of all services available today: A continually evolving feature set.

How's it work?

The BrowserPlus platform is a couple web browser plugins and some supporting programs. The end-user installs the platform as they would any client software. Once BrowserPlus is installed, web page authors can detect its presence, and require the specific services that they would like to leverage in their site. If services are not installed on the client machine, the end user is prompted for their installation. On the fly, plugins are "activated" (downloaded and installed), and are immediately available in the browser without a restart.

What are the benefits of BrowserPlus?

For end-users BrowserPlus makes installing, updating, and deleting plugins much easier:

• No more browser restarts
• Clear language about what plugins do.
• Simple granting and revocation of permissions on a per-page basis
• New features that work across all popular browsers!

Web developers gain access to a growing set of features that work the same across browsers and platforms. They have robust tools for specifying the versions of services they want to use, and they access all of this functionality through a simple and symmetric API.

Service Developers get a simplified development cycle. The platform has built-in a lot of the stuff we used to have to write. Versioning, update, revocation, and distribution are all handled by the platform, so a developer gets to focus on the core functionality they want to expose, and NOT a bunch of disparate browser APIs and update mechanisms. Want to prototype an idea quickly? Write it in Ruby!

Join our community!

Enjoy direct access to the engineers who work on BrowserPlus on in Yahoo! Developer Network forums.

Terms of use

Usage of the BrowserPlus platform and associated javascript libraries is covered under the Yahoo! Terms of Service, Yahoo! Privacy Policy, and Yahoo! BrowserPlus Developer License.

Usage of the BrowserPlus platform client software is covered by the BrowserPlus End User License Agreement.

Permission to Modify

You may use and modify all code snippets on this site, subject to the Yahoo! BrowserPlus Developer License.