Google Wave: Up and Running

Preface

This book provides an in-depth look at Google Wave, a new platform that has the potential to revolutionize the way we communicate and collaborate with each other on the Web in real time. This new and exciting platform incorporates several mature and emerging technologies, including email, instant messaging, wiki, online documents, and gadgets.

Initially released as a developer preview, Google Wave is now available as a limited public preview, which means that the platform’s core functionality and features are stable enough for public use but that overall it’s not quite ready for prime time. As you will learn in this book, Google Wave is more than a product; it is a broad platform that also comprises a set of open application programming interfaces (APIs) and a network protocol.

This book has two primary goals. First, this book aims to bring you up to speed on the fundamental concepts of the Google Wave platform and to familiarize you with the Google Wave Client, the web app that allows end users to participate and collaborate via the platform. Second, this book aims to provide you with technical knowledge that will allow you to utilize Google Wave’s APIs to develop extensions and to embed waves in web pages and applications.

After you read this book, you will have a firm understanding of Google Wave as a pseudonebulous “platform,” the skills needed to participate in waves using the Google Wave Client, and the knowledge needed to develop various types of applications and solutions using three core APIs.

About This Book

This book is a comprehensive resource for users and developers alike. This book’s coverage of Google Wave represents an early look at an exciting new platform that until recently was available only to a small number of privileged developers. As Google Wave continues to mature, there is no doubt that gaining insight and knowledge about this exciting new platform will allow you to maximize your use of the Google Wave Client and APIs to extend the platform and customize its functions and display.

This Book’s Target Audience

This book aims to strike a balance between a broad audience and a technical audience so that nontechies and ninja coders alike will find utility in the subject matter and technical concepts presented in the book. Although Google Wave’s fundamental concepts are easy to understand, the platform itself is complex and sophisticated. Taking this complexity and sophistication into consideration, the knowledge presented in this book lays the foundation for you to do additional work with Google Wave, whether you intend to collaborate with friends or colleagues or you plan on programming with the various open APIs that already are accessible.

A Few Words on the Look and Feel of Google Wave

Google Wave is still in the early stages of development, so it’s important to keep in mind that it will continue to evolve as the Google Wave team and an enthusiastic developer community continue to work with various facets of the platform. You may notice that the look and feel changes slightly over time (as is the case with most things on the Web) and that new terminology or concepts are introduced as the platform is extended.

A note to the developers in the crowd: if you are using the Google Wave Sandbox to access the Google Wave Client, you may notice subtle differences in the interface between the developer preview and the public preview. Chances are good that if you already have access to the Google Wave Sandbox that you have enough technical proficiency to understand these subtle differences.

This Book’s Scope

The first two chapters of this book cover the conceptual information that you need in order to understand how Google Wave is structured and how it works. Chapters 3 and 4 are dedicated to reviewing how you can use the Google Wave Client, and Chapter 5 provides an overview of the Google Wave APIs. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 cover the APIs in detail, complete with several examples of code that illustrate how to use the various APIs independently and collectively. Lastly, Chapter 9 provides an overview of the Google Wave Federation Protocol and some additional considerations that you should keep in mind as you move forward with Google Wave.

Google Wave, as a platform, includes several key concepts that together represent a new model for online communication and collaboration. Not only will you learn about the threaded conversation model incorporated into conversations, or waves, you also will learn about how these conversations are essentially captured as a new type of online document. In addition, you will learn some of the new terminology used with Google Wave, including wavelets, blips, gadgets, and robots.

The Google Wave Client represents a new breed of web app. Targeted for use in browsers that support the new HTML5 standard, the Google Wave Client integrates much of the functionality of desktop apps, thereby providing users with a rich and highly functional user interface. As you progress through the book, you will learn about the user interface and about how to work with waves using this interface.

In addition to learning about how to create and update waves, you will learn how to enhance these waves using mini-applications called extensions. These extensions, comprised of robots and gadgets, allow you to augment and extend waves in numerous ways. From robots that automatically update a wave with your tweets to gadgets that map the location of a wave’s participants, you will learn how to use extensions as well as how to develop them using a rich set of APIs.

You’ll also learn how to use another API to embed waves in other containers, such as web pages and web apps. Lastly, you’ll become familiar with the open source protocol used to power Google Wave. The Google Wave Federation Protocol is an innovative new protocol that can be used to set up federated server instances that can be used in conjunction with Google Wave as well as with other federated wave servers.