This tutorial leads you through writing your first mashup, a web application that pulls together distributed content from different sources and presents it in a new and exciting way.
A mashup is a web application that pulls together distributed content from different sources and presents it in a new and exciting way. Many examples can be found at Programmable Web.
Mashups are quickly becoming a favorite for programming contests because not only do they foster creativity, but they also encourage the reuse of various components/technologies for rapid development. Various frameworks, JavaScript libraries and web services can all make an appearance.
I'll take you through a sample project in this tutorial—a mini-mashup if you will—that will take a photograph, break it up and present it to the user as simple puzzle. We will obtain the image from Flickr, a community photo sharing web site. We'll use the drag and drop functionality from Yahoo!'s User Interface Library so we don't have to worry about coding and debugging our own JavaScript. Everything will be pulled together with everyone's favorite language, PHP.
