After hearing about Y!Q from ZDNet (via Slashdot) I decided to poke around a bit at the technology behind Y!Q. If you break Y!Q down to bare bones, this is what you end up with:
On Yahoo’s site, the context input is a hidden field, but it’s much more fun to be able to poke at it interactively. The code that drives the popup resides at http://yq.search.yahoo.com/javascript/yq.js, which is well commented with lots of white space, unlike the javascript I’ve seen from Google which tends to be very dense (but quick to send over the line). yq.js is an interesting read, one that I’m still digesting.
I’ve got to say that the overall effect is quite interesting, and lots of fun to play with. I’ve got a local copy of the above code if you’d like to play along at home.
More information:
