The bridge between desktop and browser can be filled by available technologies of rich Internet applications
development. Practically, the user is capable to interact both with desktop elements and web browser based ones through the functionalities of a RIA (Rich Internet Application).


The "Sneak Peek" release of Yahoo! BrowserPlus allows users to live a different browsing experience by extending the desktop to the browser limits. The web browser capabilities will be enhanced by Yahoo! BrowserPlus to provide users the possibility to perform more desktop common actions inside the web browser window.

For example, the demo application Photo Uploader (an image editing and images Flickr upload rich Internet application) permits users to execute inside the web browser drag and drop and image cropping actions, apply various filters to images and other actions. Code samples for developers are available for simple and complex applications.

The BrowserPlus software is available for installation for Windows XP and Vista, respectively Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard operating systems and will work with Firefox 2.x, Safari 3 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 web browsers. The BrowserPlus software runs independently from the web browser and as a consequence it will not influence directly the browser capacity of response regarding web pages rendering speed.

A unique feature of BrowserPlus is its capability of new services integration without restarting the browser. The development team of BrowserPlus is also focused over the maintenance of application security: services having security issues will be disabled before someone puts into practice various types of cyber attacks.

Until a public release, "Sneak Peek" BrowserPlus will be present only on websites belonging to Yahoo! or Yahoo! partner websites. The browser capabilities extension towards creation of a desktop - like web based environment for Internet users through rich Internet applications - will be a major attraction for developers in the near future.