Although the focus of this book is on public web
application programming interfaces (APIs), you??™ll first study the human user interface (UI) of
web sites for their mashup potential.
Why not jump straight to using APIs if that??™s what you want to use to create mashups?
After all, wouldn??™t the APIs be the most useful place to begin with since they are especially
designed for enabling access to the web site??™s data and services? What you learn from studying
a web site??™s user interface is useful??”even essential??”to using APIs effectively. When you exercise
a web site??™s public API, you usually need to understand the overall logic of the web site. For
instance, some mashups, such as those created with Greasemonkey (like the Google Maps in
Flickr [GMiF] script from Chapter 1), extend the application directly by hooking into and blending
with the existing user interface. To create something like GMiF, you would need detailed
knowledge of the application you plan to mash up. One of the best ways to uncover potential
hooks of a web site is to use the web site as an end user, armed with a developer??™s sensibility.
Creating mashups doesn??™t always require much programming. It can be as simple as linking
to the right part of an application, accessing the appropriate feed, or connecting the web
site to a weblog. In this chapter, I will point out how features created for end users can enable
you to create mashups with minimal or no programming.
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