Google Wave Preview Opens Up on Sept 30th - What to Expect

Posted by Dionysios G. Synodinos on Aug 15, 2009

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Google Wave

With the Google Wave Preview scheduled for public availability on September 30^th, Wave API Tech Lead Douwe Osinga has posted on the Wave Google Group about what the team has been working on along with some future directions.

Up until now with the limited availability of testing accounts there have been complaints on the Google Group from users that wanted to get their hands on this new technology but didn’t have access to the sandbox. As Douwe explains the team has been busy all this time with stability issues and more:

We're working hard to balance stability and reliability of the system with adding new API features and fixing the existing bugs.

He also talks about new features:

As a brief review, here are some recent things we've done related to the APIs:

* Improved the extension manifest file
* Made it easy to create extension installers (the "puzzle piece"
wave). From the debug menu, simply select "Add Extension Installer"
* Open sourced the Java Robots API
* Implemented Context for robots
* Added a hover menu to gadgets
* Append content to document with simple HTML
* Initial robot to gadget communication (though it still needs some
work!)

After providing a rough roadmap for the project, Douwe mentions some future directions:

Following September 30th, we have several things in mind, but it'll be important to see what gets built in the meantime and hear your feedback on the APIs as things evolve.

Some ideas we're currently thinking about for later in the year:

- Expand the number of hooks extensions can plug into (via regular expressions)
- Enable robots that aren't required to use Google App Engine
- Provide an API for robots to access attachments, search and contact
- Explore tools for improving the robot development/debug experience
- Expand the embedding API to cover more use cases

Dan Peterson has explained how this opening-up will happen:

This will take place on wave.google.com rather than the separate "sandbox" instance we are currently using, and we plan to involve about 100,000 users. In addition to the developers already using Wave, we will invite groups of users from the hundreds of thousands who offered to help report bugs when they signed up on wave.google.com.

InfoQ has published a news story about the Google Wave Architecture and will continue to follow Google Wave developments.

Dionysios G. Synodinos is a Web Engineer and a freelance consultant, focusing on Web technologies

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