Yahoo! Blueprint Developer’s Guide

Introduction
This guide explains how to write mobile applications for the Yahoo! BlueprintTM Platform. Specifically, it documents the Blueprint markup language and provides instructions for developing, testing, and publishing mobile Internet services.

Understanding the Yahoo! Blueprint Platform
Using Blueprint, third-party developers can provide custom content and services in a variety of ways. Applications can be Yahoo! Go Mobile Widgets, browser-based Mobile Sites, or stand-alone Mobile Apps:
Mobile Widgets run under Yahoo! Go. Users can subscribe to published Widgets by selecting them from the Widget Gallery and add Widgets to the Yahoo! Go carousel for faster access.
Mobile Sites are accessible from any standard Web browser. Once published, they can be found using the search facility on Yahoo!’s mobile homepage.
Mobile Apps rely on a stand-alone version of the Blueprint runtime installed on the user’s phone. They are accessed independently of both Web browsers and Yahoo! Go.
The deployment sections in this guide focus on Widgets. For information about publishing Mobile Sites and Mobile Apps, see the supplementary documents available from Yahoo!’s Mobile Developer site.

All mobile applications are written with an XML markup set called Blueprint, which is loosely based on XForms. In the version documented here, Blueprint hides most of the complex data-binding apparatus of XForms. The Blueprint language is purely declarative; it includes no scripting or procedural code. Applications are hosted on your own Web server, where, in addition to information content for the application, you can use server-side scripting to provide any needed logic.

Each screen is served as a separate file containing a Blueprint page element. In addition to XML files, Blueprint applications can include graphics in standard formats such as PNG, GIF, or JPEG. To run as a Mobile Widget, a completed application must be packaged with configuration files, submitted, and approved for publication.

Design Notes
Blueprint enforces a strict, highly abstracted user-interface model. This gives it the dual advantages of simplicity and compatibility with the widest possible range of hand-held devices; it can even be deployed on screens whose only available display mode is XHTML. Future versions of the language will incorporate a fuller implementation of XForms that will offer more flexibility as well as the ability to run directly on hand-held devices.

UI controls in Blueprint are designed to exploit the full capabilities of high-end mobile devices while degrading gracefully on smaller, less powerful handsets. A complex, visually rich interface can usually be  “scaled down” for simpler devices, but there is no way to “scale up” an under-designed interface.

Therefore, the best approach is always to design for the high end and test on the low end. Blueprint code in this document is sometimes illustrated with images of application screens. These illustrations are examples only. The actual appearance of an application depends on the language implementation, environment, application type, and hand-held device.

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