May 3rd, 2007
Yahoo goes Rich Internet Application for its browser messenger
Today Yahoo released a web based version of its messenger which was built using Adobe's Flex 2 on top of Flash Player 9. The application is very well done and I thought it was more than competitive with Meebo. It's also fast, intuitive and stable, things a lot of people don't usually associate with Flash applications.
Yahoo has been doing great things with Flex including the new Finance site and their Maps product. This is just another example of some of the cool web experiences that Flex and Flash make easy. Even Mike Arrington of TechCrunch seemed impressed with the new product. Meebo has done quite well in the IM space, but I think it's telling that both Yahoo and Google went with Flash for their browser based IM clients. Microsoft has to follow suit and a Silverlight client wouldn't be a stretch.
One other intriguing thing about this is what it may mean for a Yahoo Messenger desktop client on the Mac. The Yahoo team put together a great Windows Presentation Foundation client for Vista, but that would be difficult to port to the Mac. This version on the other hand, because it was built with Flex, would be easy to turn into an Apollo application so it could run outside the browser on either PCs or Macs.
Ryan Stewart, a Rich Internet Application developer and industry analyst, recently joined Adobe's Platform Team as a Rich Internet Application Evangelist. full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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