Yahoo becoming developers' best friend

Yahoo released a new version of their YUI library yesterday.  I have to say I'm very impressed with what these guys are doing--they're taking Microsoft's place as the most developer-friendly company on the Net.

Some of the cooler things they're doing:

• Window widgets
• Very nice modal dialogs
• Nested CSS page layouts.  This one is sorely needed as there's currently no standard layout engine and this one is nice and flexible.  It even supports nesting!
• Ajaxian has a full list of new UI widgets here.

The cool thing about what Yahoo's doing is that everything they're coming out with is VERY well documented, works great, and they're working with existing standards.  They're sharing the guts of their development efforts, and us developer-types love that.  Microsoft does a decent job, and their LiveClipboard stuff is fantastic, but their Atlas library pales in comparison to what Yahoo's been up to.

If they keep up this level of activity they could end up being the de-facto standard for Web 2.0 front end development.  They sure have the firepower to build a neatly organized development community, and their stuff has been very well received so far.  Kudos, Yahoo, I'll probably take it for a spin here soon.