Scott Schiller, Douglas Crockford, YUI and SoundManager 2

This Blog post pretends to have the super-secret, inside scoop about why Scott Schiller’s excellent SoundManager 2 is not even free associated with YUI. First of all, my attention is directed toward SoundManager 2 over OpenLaszlo for the next-generation Songhay System streaming audio player. SoundManager 2 uses a ‘hidden’ Flash movie to stream MP3 files and opens up the rest of the Web client to Google searches—I mean Yahoo! searches.

However, one look at Scott Schiller’s JavaScript code tells me immediately that he has not taken the teachings of Douglas Crockford to heart. The basic problem is that Scott’s code is not separated into its own namespace making “mash ups” shaky. By the way, as of this writing, tinyMCE has the same problem. The other basic problem is that Scott’s JavaScript fails in jslint for a few relatively cosmetic issues that an ex-Yahoo! guy that does not drink and burp into microphones like Dustin Diaz can fix. You may ask, “Why should Scott listen to Douglas Crockford?” My super-secret sources tell me that Scott Schiller has been (and may still be) an employee for Yahoo!—and Douglas Crockford is the JavaScript architect of Yahoo! The code speaks for itself.

The temptation for me is to rewrite all of Scott’s code myself and make it compatible with YUI. But since Scott says that his SoundManager 2 code is not ready, my forlorn hope is that he is doing exactly what is needed to make his JavaScript-based streaming audio solution “mash-up” friendly. Dude, get with Doug’s program! Something tells me this will never happen…

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