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GUI Graphics Software The Internet

Laszlo Systems Open Sources Rich Client Platform 30

Posted by timothy from the now-let's-see-it-get-used dept.
cying writes "Today, Laszlo Systems released their entire rich internet applications platform (standards-based, zero-install, all-singing / all-dancing) under the CPL. Check out their cool Laszlo-powered web site and see some rockin' groovy demos. Also, read the press release, news, and blogs; download the goods; and join the community."
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Laszlo Systems Open Sources Rich Client Platform More

Laszlo Systems Open Sources Rich Client Platform

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  • Interesting (Score:1, Informative)

    by XsynackX ( 775111 )
    I've never heard of this company or project, and Firefox is being sluggish in getting the plugin for the site, but a platform like this could really be useful to the FOSS community.
  • I browsed their website a little bit but had a hard time trying to figure out why I would want to use Laszlo over just directly using Flash.
    There are plenty of "rich" web interfaces built using Javascript and Flash. Does Laszlo make this easier somehow? I tend to think that installing and configuring yet another server, learning another XML syntax, and figuring out how to work around the nuances and bugs is more difficult (in general) than just directly using the base language.
    I'm not trying to slam t
    • It looks like it's an engine written in Flash, that renders higher-level concepts based on an XML file you put together.

      I'm not a Flash developer, so I don't know that much about the level of what they're adding -- but I think it's along the lines of implementing "sidebar" or "drawer"-style elements in a few lines, instead of needing to develop the animation yourself. I assume they also make layout, transitions, etc. easier.

      Of course, these kinds of built-in high-level functionality are a limiting factor
    • From glancing at the LPS datasheet [laszlosystems.com], it looks like gtk and libglade for Flash. Could be good. It's not clear to me wether you still need the Flash IDE to do anything useful.

      You can do a lot with Flash, and it's a good platform for getting "rich" UIs to clients on multiple platforms without forcing them to install anything. ActiveX and Java web start have less penetration than the Flash player.

      I just wish this kind of thing were happening with SVG, SMIL, DOM, and JavaScript rather than Macromedia's propri

  • http://www.davidtemkin.com/mtarchive/000001.html [davidtemkin.com]

    According to that, it's an actual "language", wherein as you would write C++ and compile it to a machine executable format, you code in LZX, which is then compiled into SWF bytecode.
    • Actionscript 2.0 [oreilly.com] the language behind the latest Flash, is a real programming language. It feels very java-ish. So, why again do we need Lazlo?
      • Actionscript is an embedded Javascript interpreter in the Flash player, with the addition of APIs for manipulating the Flash environment instead of the traditional HTML/XML document environment.

        It's a great idea, because Javascript is such a fantastically dynamic language (but hell to use for anything complex within the browser itself...), perfect for embedded use in exactly that sort of thing (among others -- I think QT uses it for making QT-based apps scriptable).
        • I think you're underestimating actionscript 2.0.

          While it's far from perfect, and it's not Java, it doesn't feel like javascript with extra flash API calls.

          It feels a lot more like java. I'm only to some extent a newbie Actionscript 2.0 programmer, but I'm considering it seriously for web app development and, gmail asside, I wouldn't make the same statement about javascript.

          If only Flash wasn't so proprietary (only likes talking to .NET backends etc though there is an opensource php remoting (client/serve [amfphp.org]

          • From what I remember (and my memory is definitely NOT perfect ;)), ActionScript doesn't just feel like JavaScript, it actually is JavaScript (ie. an embedded JavaScript interpreter in the Flash player).

            However, I should clarify that I believe I'm talking about ActionScript 1.0, not 2.0. I haven't used Flash in quite some time. I'm curious though as to what's changed, and if ActionScript 2.0 is in fact it's own language now.

            In feeling more like Java than JavaScript, what is the difference? I would thi

            • Actionscript 2.0 is very different from actionscript 1.0. They are an entirely different beast. Actionscript 1.0 code will not run unmodified in an actionscript 2.0 environment.
              • Wow, it is different. Still, it looks like it's probably just some Java-esque syntactic sugar on top of JavaScript. Actually, some of the new syntax is more akin to Perl or PHP ($ for variable names...). With their newer pro-Java focus, it makes sense to have ActionScript more compatible type-wise with Java than JavaScript was.

                It is also nice to see features like the import statement, allowing better organization of ActionScript code. My biggest problem with dynamic Flash development was that it's not

  • Initial knee-jerk negative reaction: suppressed (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mcasaday ( 562287 ) on Tuesday October 05, 2004 @10:25PM (#10447382)

    Take what I say here with your usual Slashdot-comment grain of salt because I've taken only a brief look at this thing.

    From the download [laszlosystems.com] page:

    Why Laszlo?

    Deliver a new generation of rich Internet applications for today's Web:
    • Develop in XML and JavaScript (Try it now!)
    • Deploy via any Java servlet container or J2EE application server
    • Display in any Web browser enabled with the Flash 5 player
    • Open Source platform, free for development and deployment

    Okay, so this is just a way to great Flash GUI's. My initial reaction was "BLEH! I can do that already with Flash."

    What gave me pause was that this was a impressively sophisticated [laszlosystems.com] way to create Flash GUI's using Open Source tech. Macromedia's expensive authoring tool is not required. Everything is driven by XML+JavaScript from the server side.

    So, yeah, it's just a server-side Flash generator. It's also one of the more sophisticated Open Source Flash creation tools I've seen yet. So there's that.

  • Zero install my foot! (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by dJCL ( 183345 )
    Can't do anything on their site without shockwave, if that's zero install, then I don't care to use it... Someone port wxWidgets to dHTML...

    Anyway...
  • Anyone else suspect the summary intentionally didn't mention this thing is Flash to try and gain some credibility? Since Flash is most often used for annoying ads I had to go enable it just to see what the site linked was trying to show. Next I reflexively tried to gesture open a bunch buttons into tabs - nothing happened of course since you can't use that on Flash. Next I tried to click the big "The new Web experience" main graphic in the flash - nothing happened. Great, brightest thing in there and it
    • Exactly! Flash works fine for ads and some special case stuff, but not really for normal webapps. It is sooo 2000 to build a web site with Flash...

      Just to add to the points, I tried their "Windows" user interface demo. Looks like Win2k windows inside the browser... Double-click and open a dialog... Now drag it around and try to move it outside of the browser window...

      Right. It will clip to the Flash plugin boundaries inside the browser. So it isn't really a window at all, just some silly window-looking gr

  • Standards based... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ptaff ( 165113 ) on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @12:02AM (#10447876) Homepage
    ...rich internet applications platform (standards-based, zero-install, all-singing / all-dancing)


    Last time I checked, Flash was not a web standard in the true sense, was still a proprietary technolgy and you couldn't redistribute the player (so it can't be bundled by your favorite distribution).

    Pretending that this product is standards-based is like saying MSOffice is standards-based because it can import/export XML.

    Are we to expect a future release supporting SVG - as the backend seems to be modeled around XML/ECMAScript? That'd be most impressive - and web engine friendly, at last.

    Feel ready to own one or many Tux Stickers [ptaff.ca]?
  • I would not consider it data-driven, as it is being advertized. Simply retrieving data from a server is not data-driven. A true data-driven rich client would at least implement a kind of transaction mechanism that would allow you to edit the data.

  • Flex for free? (Score:3, Informative)

    by tanguyr ( 468371 ) <tanguyr+slashdot@gmail.com> on Wednesday October 06, 2004 @05:47PM (#10454972) Homepage
    Interestingly enough, Macromedia is busy pushing it's own XML-based J2EE web application framework for creating "Rich Internet Applications" (read: flash guis) on the fly. It's called Flex [macromedia.com] and it starts at (are you sitting down?) twelve thousand dollars. Then again, before Laszlo saw the light at the end of the all-powerful, pixie-dusting, open source tunnel (i say PUT YOUR HANDS ON THE SCREEEEEEEN!) they were apparently running at 20K per server license.

    On the surface, Laszlo seems to have a lot of things going for it (especially now that it's free) - after all, Flex is still *very* 1.0 - but the rub seems to be that (so far) Laszlo works with Flash Player 5 ("or better...") whereas Flex works with Flash player 7 (the latest and greatest). I know many people around here think flash is just a technology for displaying annoying animated ads and intro screens, but flash player 7 has some very... very... interesting capabilities in terms of "data remoting" (as they call it) and handling all kinds of multimedia content that you can't do in Flash 5. Basically (real quick pundit point here) it looks to me like Laszlo had a good little party going, but now they hear the ominous sound of Flash's parents coming home. Competing with Macromedia on the Flex-Flash axis using a closed source model would be like competing with Microsoft on Windows-.NET using a closed source model: you would need some very very deep pockets.

    All in all, good news for us, we get a) some new free toys to play with and b) some pressure on Macromedia to develop more flexible Flex pricing. BTW: when you download Laszlo, there's a page listing all the third party stuff in there: it reads like a rogues gallery of apache/jakarta xml and web app stuff (and i mean the stuff like Batik) along with some nice surprises like RelaxNG. The ultimate proof of the pudding is in the eating, so there goes tomorrow evening.
    • I hope Laszlo succeeds in this interesting move going open-source, but it seems to me a somewhat desperate move... Anyway, whenever they succeed or not, the community will win ;-)

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