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The OpenLaszlo Legals Project will benefit immensely from this! OpenLaszlo is in a position to take excellent advantage of the now open source AMV2 JavaScript engine, for the benefit of users as well as developers. Not only will AVM2 make OpenLaszlo applications run faster on Firefox, but opening up the AVM2 virtual machine will make it possible to develop much more powerful debuggers and integrated development environments.

-Don

What is OpenLaszlo "Legals"?

"Legals" is an OpenLaszlo project to provide a single application environment that supports multiple deployment runtimes. OpenLaszlo 3.x supports Flash 7 and 8 now, but Legals will extend that reach to include DHTML as well as Flash 9. And with the necessary infrastructure in place, we anticipate further runtimes will be developed by the OpenLaszlo community.

The OpenLaszlo "Legals" project began at the start of 2006. We are projecting final availability by the end of the year. Developers interested in helping make Legals a reality are invited to contact us. Developers wishing to get a head-start building applications on top of Legals will be able to do so with our beta release in a few months.

Many people ask about the back story for the project name. The name, Legals, is a tribute to a well-known local restaurant in Boston where a lunch meeting inspired the team to launch this project.

See Legals FAQ for commonly asked questions and answers.

The Architecture

With Legals, the OpenLaszlo architecture is being remodularized into a true multi-runtime platform. OpenLaszlo generates script source that is compatible with ECMAScript Release 3, while leveraging extensions from ECMAScript Release 4. From there, multiple compiler backends generate JavaScript in the native dialect of the destination runtime: ActionScript 2 or 3, JScript 5.6, JavaScript 1.4+, and so on.

The OpenLaszlo runtime library is being refactored into two parts: multiple kernels containing runtime-specific code, and a cross-runtime library written in standard ECMA-3. As part of the runtime library, the OpenLaszlo class system has been rewritten in ECMA-3 and includes several innovative new features.

The OpenLaszlo runtime library delivers a common baseline of functionality across all supported runtimes. This gives the developer a rich environment in which to build full-featured web applications. In addition, Legals will include runtime-specific extensions so that the particular benefits of targeting a runtime are not lost to the OpenLaszlo application developer.

"I just hope that they don't embed Flash player into the browser. That would suck royally."

Don't disparage something you don't understand. It's like saying you hate all music cause you heard a few Britney Spears songs.

Take a look at OpenLaszlo.

The OpenLaszlo compiler also has an ECMAScript parser, and it outputs Flash bytecode. The Legals Project will support the AMV3 runtime, which Adobe just made Open Source and Mozilla will be incorporated into Firefox.

Adobe open sourcing AVM3 and Firefox incorporating it is great news for OpenLaszlo, because it dovetails so nicely with the roadmap already in place!

Opening up AVM3 also enables the development of open source debuggers and integrated development environments like Eclipse, and makes it possible to embed an efficient JavaScript engine into any application, which has enormous long term benefits for everyone.

Please, I beg: somebody write an AVM2 back-end for SWIG! That would totally rock. It's an essential tool for wrapping libraries and extending languages, that SpiderMonkey's sorely missing.

-Don

From the OpenLaszlo Project Legals FAQ:

Q: What is the Legals project?

A: Legals is a project to extend OpenLaszlo to target multiple runtimes. For our initial release, we will be supporting AVM2 (Flash 7 and 8), AVM3 (Flash 9), and DHTML. It is also possible to extend legals to other runtimes in the future.

The OpenLaszlo compiler also has an ECMAScript parser, and it outputs Flash bytecode. The Legals Project will support the AMV3 runtime, which Adobe just made Open Source and Mozilla will be incorporated into Firefox.

Adobe open sourcing AVM3 and Firefox incorporating it is great news for OpenLaszlo, because it dovetails so nicely with the roadmap already in place!

Opening up AVM3 also enables the development of open source debuggers and integrated development environments like Eclipse, and makes it possible to embed an efficient JavaScript engine into any application, which has enormous long term benefits for everyone.

Please, I beg: somebody write an AVM2 back-end for SWIG! That would totally rock. It's an essential tool for wrapping libraries and extending languages, that SpiderMonkey's sorely missing.

-Don

From the OpenLaszlo Project Legals FAQ:

Q: What is the Legals project?

A: Legals is a project to extend OpenLaszlo to target multiple runtimes. For our initial release, we will be supporting AVM2 (Flash 7 and 8), AVM3 (Flash 9), and DHTML. It is also possible to extend legals to other runtimes in the future.

The OpenLaszlo compiler also has an ECMAScript parser, and it outputs Flash bytecode. The Legals Project will support the AMV3 runtime, which Adobe just made Open Source and Mozilla will be incorporated into Firefox.

Adobe open sourcing AVM3 and Firefox incorporating it is great news for OpenLaszlo, because it dovetails so nicely with the roadmap already in place!

Opening up AVM3 also enables the development of open source debuggers and integrated development environments like Eclipse, and makes it possible to embed an efficient JavaScript engine into any application, which has enormous long term benefits for everyone.

Please, I beg: somebody write an AVM2 back-end for SWIG! That would totally rock. It's an essential tool for wrapping libraries and extending languages, that SpiderMonkey's sorely missing.

-Don

From the OpenLaszlo Project Legals FAQ:

Q: What is the Legals project?

A: Legals is a project to extend OpenLaszlo to target multiple runtimes. For our initial release, we will be supporting AVM2 (Flash 7 and 8), AVM3 (Flash 9), and DHTML. It is also possible to extend legals to other runtimes in the future.

The OpenLaszlo compiler also has an ECMAScript parser, and it outputs Flash bytecode. The Legals Project will support the AMV3 runtime, which Adobe just made Open Source and Mozilla will be incorporated into Firefox.

Adobe open sourcing AVM3 and Firefox incorporating it is great news for OpenLaszlo, because it dovetails so nicely with the roadmap already in place!

Opening up AVM3 also enables the development of open source debuggers and integrated development environments like Eclipse, and makes it possible to embed an efficient JavaScript engine into any application, which has enormous long term benefits for everyone.

Please, I beg: somebody write an AVM2 back-end for SWIG! That would totally rock. It's an essential tool for wrapping libraries and extending languages, that SpiderMonkey's sorely missing.

-Don

From the OpenLaszlo Project Legals FAQ:

Q: What is the Legals project?

A: Legals is a project to extend OpenLaszlo to target multiple runtimes. For our initial release, we will be supporting AVM2 (Flash 7 and 8), AVM3 (Flash 9), and DHTML. It is also possible to extend legals to other runtimes in the future.

OpenLaszlo's Legals Project will benefit immensely from this, because the OpenLaszlo compiler will directly target the AVM2 virtual machine that was just released as Open Source! Thanks to AVM2, Firefox will be a much better AJAX application delivery and development platform. OpenLaszlo is in a position to take excellent advantage of that, for the benifit of users as well as developers. Not only will AVM2 make OpenLaszlo applications run faster on Firefox, but opening up the AVM2 virtual machine will make it possible to develop much more powerful debuggers and integrated development environments.

All AJAX applications running on Firefox benefit, but Firefox itself will also benefit from integrating AVM2, because so much of FireFox is written in JavaScript itself.

AVM2 will be a huge improvement, because Firefox's current JavaScript interpreter, SpiderMonkey, is so extremely inefficient and wasteful of memory, that not only does it come in last in the computer language shootout, but it's actually TWICE as band and the next worst language, Smalltalk! (That's REALLY BAD.)

An important feature currently missing from Firefox that I'm looking forward to is a way to load pre-compiled binary bytecode into Firefox (like SWF9 files but without the graphics), instead of parsing and re-compiling the JavaScript source text every time. That's one of Flash's major advantages over browser-based JavaScript: it can quickly load and run pre-compiled AJAX applications much faster, thanks to the fact that it doesn't have to parse and compile huge amounts of JavaScript source code text files every time it starts up.

-Don

What is OpenLaszlo "Legals"?

"Legals" is an OpenLaszlo project to provide a single application environment that supports multiple deployment runtimes. OpenLaszlo 3.x supports Flash 7 and 8 now, but Legals will extend that reach to include DHTML as well as Flash 9. And with the necessary infrastructure in place, we anticipate further runtimes will be developed by the OpenLaszlo community.

The OpenLaszlo "Legals" project began at the start of 2006. We are projecting final availability by the end of the year. Developers interested in helping make Legals a reality are invited to contact us. Developers wishing to get a head-start building applications on top of Legals will be able to do so with our beta release in a few months.

Many people ask about the back story for the project name. The name, Legals, is a tribute to a well-known local restaurant in Boston where a lunch meeting inspired the team to launch this project.

See Legals FAQ for commonly asked questions and answers.

The Architecture

With Legals, the OpenLaszlo architecture is being remodularized into a true multi-runtime platform. OpenLaszlo generates script source that is compatible with ECMAScript Release 3, while leveraging extensions from ECMAScript Release 4. From there, multiple compiler backends generate JavaScript in the native dialect of the destination runtime: ActionScript 2 or 3, JScript 5.6, JavaScript 1.4+, and so on.

The OpenLaszlo runtime library is being refactored into two parts: multiple kernels containing runtime-specific code, and a cross-runtime library written in standard ECMA-3. As part of the runtime library, the OpenLaszlo class system has been rewritten in ECMA-3 and includes several innovative new features.

The OpenLaszlo runtime library delivers a common baseline of functionality across all supported runtimes. This gives the developer a rich environment in which to build full-featured web applications. In addition, Legals will include runtime-specific extensions so t

OpenLaszlo's Legals Project will benefit immensely from this, because the OpenLaszlo compiler will directly target the AVM2 virtual machine that was just released as Open Source! Thanks to AVM2, Firefox will be a much better AJAX application delivery and development platform. OpenLaszlo is in a position to take excellent advantage of that, for the benifit of users as well as developers. Not only will AVM2 make OpenLaszlo applications run faster on Firefox, but opening up the AVM2 virtual machine will make it possible to develop much more powerful debuggers and integrated development environments.

All AJAX applications running on Firefox benefit, but Firefox itself will also benefit from integrating AVM2, because so much of FireFox is written in JavaScript itself.

AVM2 will be a huge improvement, because Firefox's current JavaScript interpreter, SpiderMonkey, is so extremely inefficient and wasteful of memory, that not only does it come in last in the computer language shootout, but it's actually TWICE as band and the next worst language, Smalltalk! (That's REALLY BAD.)

An important feature currently missing from Firefox that I'm looking forward to is a way to load pre-compiled binary bytecode into Firefox (like SWF9 files but without the graphics), instead of parsing and re-compiling the JavaScript source text every time. That's one of Flash's major advantages over browser-based JavaScript: it can quickly load and run pre-compiled AJAX applications much faster, thanks to the fact that it doesn't have to parse and compile huge amounts of JavaScript source code text files every time it starts up.

-Don

What is OpenLaszlo "Legals"?

"Legals" is an OpenLaszlo project to provide a single application environment that supports multiple deployment runtimes. OpenLaszlo 3.x supports Flash 7 and 8 now, but Legals will extend that reach to include DHTML as well as Flash 9. And with the necessary infrastructure in place, we anticipate further runtimes will be developed by the OpenLaszlo community.

The OpenLaszlo "Legals" project began at the start of 2006. We are projecting final availability by the end of the year. Developers interested in helping make Legals a reality are invited to contact us. Developers wishing to get a head-start building applications on top of Legals will be able to do so with our beta release in a few months.

Many people ask about the back story for the project name. The name, Legals, is a tribute to a well-known local restaurant in Boston where a lunch meeting inspired the team to launch this project.

See Legals FAQ for commonly asked questions and answers.

The Architecture

With Legals, the OpenLaszlo architecture is being remodularized into a true multi-runtime platform. OpenLaszlo generates script source that is compatible with ECMAScript Release 3, while leveraging extensions from ECMAScript Release 4. From there, multiple compiler backends generate JavaScript in the native dialect of the destination runtime: ActionScript 2 or 3, JScript 5.6, JavaScript 1.4+, and so on.

The OpenLaszlo runtime library is being refactored into two parts: multiple kernels containing runtime-specific code, and a cross-runtime library written in standard ECMA-3. As part of the runtime library, the OpenLaszlo class system has been rewritten in ECMA-3 and includes several innovative new features.

The OpenLaszlo runtime library delivers a common baseline of functionality across all supported runtimes. This gives the developer a rich environment in which to build full-featured web applications. In addition, Legals will include runtime-specific extensions so t

OpenLaszlo's Legals Project will benefit immensely from this, because the OpenLaszlo compiler will directly target the AVM2 virtual machine that was just released as Open Source! Thanks to AVM2, Firefox will be a much better AJAX application delivery and development platform. OpenLaszlo is in a position to take excellent advantage of that, for the benifit of users as well as developers. Not only will AVM2 make OpenLaszlo applications run faster on Firefox, but opening up the AVM2 virtual machine will make it possible to develop much more powerful debuggers and integrated development environments.

All AJAX applications running on Firefox benefit, but Firefox itself will also benefit from integrating AVM2, because so much of FireFox is written in JavaScript itself.

AVM2 will be a huge improvement, because Firefox's current JavaScript interpreter, SpiderMonkey, is so extremely inefficient and wasteful of memory, that not only does it come in last in the computer language shootout, but it's actually TWICE as band and the next worst language, Smalltalk! (That's REALLY BAD.)

An important feature currently missing from Firefox that I'm looking forward to is a way to load pre-compiled binary bytecode into Firefox (like SWF9 files but without the graphics), instead of parsing and re-compiling the JavaScript source text every time. That's one of Flash's major advantages over browser-based JavaScript: it can quickly load and run pre-compiled AJAX applications much faster, thanks to the fact that it doesn't have to parse and compile huge amounts of JavaScript source code text files every time it starts up.

-Don

What is OpenLaszlo "Legals"?

"Legals" is an OpenLaszlo project to provide a single application environment that supports multiple deployment runtimes. OpenLaszlo 3.x supports Flash 7 and 8 now, but Legals will extend that reach to include DHTML as well as Flash 9. And with the necessary infrastructure in place, we anticipate further runtimes will be developed by the OpenLaszlo community.

The OpenLaszlo "Legals" project began at the start of 2006. We are projecting final availability by the end of the year. Developers interested in helping make Legals a reality are invited to contact us. Developers wishing to get a head-start building applications on top of Legals will be able to do so with our beta release in a few months.

Many people ask about the back story for the project name. The name, Legals, is a tribute to a well-known local restaurant in Boston where a lunch meeting inspired the team to launch this project.

See Legals FAQ for commonly asked questions and answers.

The Architecture

With Legals, the OpenLaszlo architecture is being remodularized into a true multi-runtime platform. OpenLaszlo generates script source that is compatible with ECMAScript Release 3, while leveraging extensions from ECMAScript Release 4. From there, multiple compiler backends generate JavaScript in the native dialect of the destination runtime: ActionScript 2 or 3, JScript 5.6, JavaScript 1.4+, and so on.

The OpenLaszlo runtime library is being refactored into two parts: multiple kernels containing runtime-specific code, and a cross-runtime library written in standard ECMA-3. As part of the runtime library, the OpenLaszlo class system has been rewritten in ECMA-3 and includes several innovative new features.

The OpenLaszlo runtime library delivers a common baseline of functionality across all supported runtimes. This gives the developer a rich environment in which to build full-featured web applications. In addition, Legals will include runtime-specific extensions so t

OpenLaszlo's Legals Project will benefit immensely from this, because the OpenLaszlo compiler will directly target the AVM2 virtual machine that was just released as Open Source! Thanks to AVM2, Firefox will be a much better AJAX application delivery and development platform. OpenLaszlo is in a position to take excellent advantage of that, for the benifit of users as well as developers. Not only will AVM2 make OpenLaszlo applications run faster on Firefox, but opening up the AVM2 virtual machine will make it possible to develop much more powerful debuggers and integrated development environments.

All AJAX applications running on Firefox benefit, but Firefox itself will also benefit from integrating AVM2, because so much of FireFox is written in JavaScript itself.

AVM2 will be a huge improvement, because Firefox's current JavaScript interpreter, SpiderMonkey, is so extremely inefficient and wasteful of memory, that not only does it come in last in the computer language shootout, but it's actually TWICE as band and the next worst language, Smalltalk! (That's REALLY BAD.)

An important feature currently missing from Firefox that I'm looking forward to is a way to load pre-compiled binary bytecode into Firefox (like SWF9 files but without the graphics), instead of parsing and re-compiling the JavaScript source text every time. That's one of Flash's major advantages over browser-based JavaScript: it can quickly load and run pre-compiled AJAX applications much faster, thanks to the fact that it doesn't have to parse and compile huge amounts of JavaScript source code text files every time it starts up.

-Don

What is OpenLaszlo "Legals"?

"Legals" is an OpenLaszlo project to provide a single application environment that supports multiple deployment runtimes. OpenLaszlo 3.x supports Flash 7 and 8 now, but Legals will extend that reach to include DHTML as well as Flash 9. And with the necessary infrastructure in place, we anticipate further runtimes will be developed by the OpenLaszlo community.

The OpenLaszlo "Legals" project began at the start of 2006. We are projecting final availability by the end of the year. Developers interested in helping make Legals a reality are invited to contact us. Developers wishing to get a head-start building applications on top of Legals will be able to do so with our beta release in a few months.

Many people ask about the back story for the project name. The name, Legals, is a tribute to a well-known local restaurant in Boston where a lunch meeting inspired the team to launch this project.

See Legals FAQ for commonly asked questions and answers.

The Architecture

With Legals, the OpenLaszlo architecture is being remodularized into a true multi-runtime platform. OpenLaszlo generates script source that is compatible with ECMAScript Release 3, while leveraging extensions from ECMAScript Release 4. From there, multiple compiler backends generate JavaScript in the native dialect of the destination runtime: ActionScript 2 or 3, JScript 5.6, JavaScript 1.4+, and so on.

The OpenLaszlo runtime library is being refactored into two parts: multiple kernels containing runtime-specific code, and a cross-runtime library written in standard ECMA-3. As part of the runtime library, the OpenLaszlo class system has been rewritten in ECMA-3 and includes several innovative new features.

The OpenLaszlo runtime library delivers a common baseline of functionality across all supported runtimes. This gives the developer a rich environment in which to build full-featured web applications. In addition, Legals will include runtime-specific extensions so t

Working on an OpenLaszlo http://www.openlaszlo.org/ project, which occasionally caused the flash player to timeout while testing. Its nice that i can now "continue running the script" instead of being forced to close out, fix one problem, come back in only to find another problem. Flash 7 on fedora didn't allow me to continue. Unfortunately flash 9 doesn't feel any faster in the application than flash 7 did.

I'd also like to address your deliberately misleading statement that "It's a bunch of alpha-quality code that's looking for developers."

Quoting the web site:

Developers wishing to get a head-start building applications on top of Legals will be able to do so with our beta release in a few months.

(Emphasis mine.) What do you call code that's a few months from being ready for beta? I always heard it was called alpha.

OpenLaszlo version 3.3 is quite solid and production quality code.

And OpenLaszlo version 3.3 is not "an open source platform for creating zero-install 'AJAX' web applications", as announced in this article; rather, it's a system for building Flash applications. I don't care if you have the greatest Flash generator in the universe; that doesn't mean you have a working AJAX web application generator, let alone one that's ready to use in production.

I don't think you should call something "an open source platform for creating zero-install 'AJAX' web applications" until it actually is. Call it a project to develop a platform for creating AJAX web applications; call it a platform for developing Flash applications. Call it a platform for Flash applications that will one day also generate AJAX applications, even. Just be honest about what you have versus what you will have one day real soon now, so that you don't waste people's time. That's all I'm asking.

Who are you to say when open source projects should make announcements? Would you lecture Linus that he announced his operating system too soon, and should have waited until it was beta quality? Bill Gates would certainly agree with you, and he'd probably add that it's still not beta quality.

First of all, please read the announcement and web pages before replying, this time. Second of all, we use Subversion, not CVS. Third of all, you can download an installer for the nightly build or the latest stable release from here. And finally, stop complaining that the open source development process is not closed and secretive.

-Don

Is it just new demos that you want? Well that's easy! Here's an OpenLaszlo YouTube Player, which is a demonstration of the new video api. And of course there's SimFaux and its open source code and content.

-Don

yeah, it's frustrating when software makes massive progress in full public view, eh? wtf.

the DHTML target has been going since about the start of the year. how soon would you like it to be done?

When installing the Linux Flash Player it does require extra steps to get the fonts installed right (Macr/Adobe does provide those instructions). Maybe you ran into that...

This has always worked for me:
<canvas>
      <text>hello world!</text>
</canvas>
If you run it with hello.lzx?lzr=dhtml in the nightly builds of "Legals" you don't even need Flash!

For a practical example, check out http://www.laszlomail.com/ -- this is a very complete webmail implementation with a rich, dynamic user experience that rivals a desktop mail client. More applications are linked from the OpenLaszlo wiki here: http://wiki.openlaszlo.org/OpenLaszlo_Applications

Why would anyone choose to tie themselves to proprietary Flash and FLEX, when you can have your cake and eat it too with OpenLaszlo, which supports both Flash and DHTML, and is completely Open Source?

So when will FLEX support DHTML or SVG? The answer is NEVER, because it's designed to lock you in and make you depend on Flash 9 -- it not designed to be platform independent, like OpenLaszlo.

FLEX is not Open Source, so you can't just add support for your favorite runtime or graphics model, the way Henry Minsky added SVG support to OpenLaszlo.

-Don

07.31.06
Notes on writing a new OpenLaszlo kernel; SVG

Posted in General at 12:30 pm by hminsky

I've been interested in SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) for a long time, and have thought it would make a good runtime platform for OpenLaszlo applications. With the development of the Legals release, I wanted to see how difficult it would be to port the DHTML kernel (which is still under development) to SVG. Since Firefox and Opera now support SVG 1.1 natively, it seemed like it was a good time to try this out. SVG is strong on graphics imaging and text rendering, I think of it like a free-software version of Adobe's crown jewels.

With two days of hacking over the weekend, I got a large about of the Sprite API ported to SVG.

Here's a version of the SVG kernel running, try this in Firefox: Try clicking on the gray area of the gray square, the red rect, or the blue rect, or the text string

http://www.beartronics.com/svg/svg.html

source of test LZX app
http://www.beartronics.com/svg/sprite.lzx

Flash version
http://www.beartronics.com/svg/sprite.lzx.swf

This tells me that the kernel API is pretty much on target, certainly for runtimes which have HTML/SVG javascript-like event handling.

I was disappointed to learn that SVG 1.1 (which is what Firefox supports now) does not handle input text or wrapping text regions, however SVG 1.2 does have these, so I look forward to finishing this work when Firefox SVG 1.2 support is released, and then we will have an OpenLaszlo runtime with the beautiful imaging model from SVG.

If time permits, I will try to clean up the SVG kernel enough to stick into an upcoming Legals release, so interested people can look at it. I haven't implemented image or data loading yet, and there's some bugs with background color names and defaults.

SVG has been slow to gain traction, but I think it is one of the best hope for high quality portable graphics, and maybe even rich internet apps that use them, in the future.

Why would anyone choose to tie themselves to proprietary Flash and FLEX, when you can have your cake and eat it too with OpenLaszlo, which supports both Flash and DHTML, and is completely Open Source?

So when will FLEX support DHTML or SVG? The answer is NEVER, because it's designed to lock you in and make you depend on Flash 9 -- it not designed to be platform independent, like OpenLaszlo.

FLEX is not Open Source, so you can't just add support for your favorite runtime or graphics model, the way Henry Minsky added SVG support to OpenLaszlo.

-Don

07.31.06
Notes on writing a new OpenLaszlo kernel; SVG

Posted in General at 12:30 pm by hminsky

I've been interested in SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) for a long time, and have thought it would make a good runtime platform for OpenLaszlo applications. With the development of the Legals release, I wanted to see how difficult it would be to port the DHTML kernel (which is still under development) to SVG. Since Firefox and Opera now support SVG 1.1 natively, it seemed like it was a good time to try this out. SVG is strong on graphics imaging and text rendering, I think of it like a free-software version of Adobe's crown jewels.

With two days of hacking over the weekend, I got a large about of the Sprite API ported to SVG.

Here's a version of the SVG kernel running, try this in Firefox: Try clicking on the gray area of the gray square, the red rect, or the blue rect, or the text string

http://www.beartronics.com/svg/svg.html

source of test LZX app
http://www.beartronics.com/svg/sprite.lzx

Flash version
http://www.beartronics.com/svg/sprite.lzx.swf

This tells me that the kernel API is pretty much on target, certainly for runtimes which have HTML/SVG javascript-like event handling.

I was disappointed to learn that SVG 1.1 (which is what Firefox supports now) does not handle input text or wrapping text regions, however SVG 1.2 does have these, so I look forward to finishing this work when Firefox SVG 1.2 support is released, and then we will have an OpenLaszlo runtime with the beautiful imaging model from SVG.

If time permits, I will try to clean up the SVG kernel enough to stick into an upcoming Legals release, so interested people can look at it. I haven't implemented image or data loading yet, and there's some bugs with background color names and defaults.

SVG has been slow to gain traction, but I think it is one of the best hope for high quality portable graphics, and maybe even rich internet apps that use them, in the future.

There are cross-platform thin-client network solutions like VNC or Nomachine's NX. They do exactly what the web x.0 wants to do, they do it fast and they do it without all the bloat and packing/unpacking of (essentially very simple) data.

You've got it backwards. VNC and the like send bitmaps across the wire. Bitmaps, even with compression, are more bloated and take more packing and unpacking than simple data. Other reasons to prefer AJAX, Flex, Laszlo, Altio, Nexaweb or other similar frameworks rather than terminal server type products are:

• Responsiveness - each mouse click or keystroke and pixel draw does not have to travel the network.
• Scalability - the client is doing all the UI work, the server only needs to handle serving and saving the data
• Ubiquity - web browsers are everywhere, Flash and Java plugins are nearly everywhere. VNC clients are confined to the IT department's desktops.
• Firewalls - most firewalls will let you through on port 80. Many companies clamp down on port 5301 (or whatever)

Also, the article gets it wrong when it states that these frameworks have suddenly started appearing in the last year since AJAX became popular. Aside from Flex, the products I've named above date back to around 2000. They're becoming more visible now that people are starting to see the possibilities of RIAs, but the 6+ year history behind some of these products means they're already stable, quality frameworks with good developer support.

The NeWS window system was programmed in PostScript, and was the original "AJAXian" window system, except that it used PostScript instead of JavaScript, PostScript instead of XML, and PostScript instead of DHTML, so it was much more consistent and vastly better designed than JavaScript and AJAX.

Some people didn't prefer programming directly in PostScript, so there were several projects to compile high level languages into PostScript code for NeWS:

In 1987, Dave Singer at Schlumberger wrote LispScript, a Lisp to PostScript compiler for NeWS.

In 1988, Rehmi Post at UniPress wrote C2PS, an C to PostScript compiler based on the Amsterdam compiler kit.

In 1992, Arthur van Hoff at the Turing Institute (the same guy who later wrote the Java compiler in Java) wrote PdB, a C++ to PostScript compiler.

OpenLaszlo compiles the high level Laszlo programming language (which is a combination of JavaScript embedded in XML) into Flash byte codes, as well as JavaScript that runs in web browsers.

This idea has been around for a LOT longer than the term "AJAX", or the JavaScript language.

-Don

Did you even go to the site? Openlaszlo? RIGHT THERE you can launch a DHTML site from the SAME source code that also creates a Flash page.

IT's there! It's in pre-beta, you can see it works.

Sure. Just like any open source project, you earn your stripes and you get commit access. And like other big open source projects, OpenLaszlo has a review process for all commits.

Your contributor faq doesn't indicate commit access, only that patches must be submitted via email. Not quite "true open source".

Are you implying that I could get commit access to the Flex codebase? Or that Flex is open source? What are you implying?

I am not trying to imply that Flex is more "open" than Laszlo, rather that Laszlo isn't "true open source". Why didn't you respond to my comment about ownership? In my mind, with "true open source" I still own the code I contribute.

(Disclaimer: I work for Adobe, and after JBoss decided to use Flex 2 for their webmail client, I spent my own time, on evenings and weekends helping them build it.)

The OpenLaszlo compiler is being rewritten to support the more efficient Flash 9 runtime, as well as other runtimes like DHTML/AJAX:
http://wiki.openlaszlo.org/Legals_Project
http://wiki.openlaszlo.org/Legals_Project_Plan

SWF9 Runtime Goals

The immediate goal of the swf9 porting project is to take advantage of the performance improvements in swf9 (AVM2). The swf9 vm is 10x faster for low-level stuff, with types another 2x or so. A secondary goal is to enable access to new features of AVM2, especially where these features are or will also be supported by other runtimes (e.g., regular expressions, E4X support deferred from intial release). It is not a goal of this project to add these new features. For example, it is outside the scope of this project to add regular expressions or E4X to the OpenLaszlo platform. However, this project should leave the platform in a state where it is easier to add these features in a way that has support on at least one swf and one non-swf target.

The OpenLaszlo server is a Java servlet that compiles LZX applications into executable binaries for targeted run-time environments. OpenLaszlo currently targets the Flash Player, versions SWF6, SWF7 and SWF8. The version now in development, code-named "Legals", will also target SWF9 and traditional DHTML as deployment targets by end of 2006.

But of course Flex locks you into Flash! If not, then please tell me what other runtimes does Flex support, besides Flash? Can you compile Flex programs into DHTML that runs in the browser without Flash, the way you can do with the new version of OpenLaszlo? Will Flash ever support Microsoft Avalon, the way Laszlo plans to? Or will it ALWAYS require the Flash player, and directly expose many Flash specific features instead of abstracting them the way OpenLaszlo does?

And how did you make the conceptual leap from "more affordable pricing" to "*FREE*"? There's a world of difference between Adobe offering a free non-commercial evaluation for a product they charge a steep per-developer and per-server license for, and true Free Open Source Software like OpenLaszlo. Can you please tell me what the "big per-CPU price tag" will be, or did Adobe make you sign an NDA before telling you that?

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flexbuilder2/
How much will Flex Builder 2.0 cost?
Flex Builder 2.0, which includes a license for the Flex framework, will be licensed on a per seat basis, similar to other integrated development environments. Final pricing is not yet available, but Flex Builder 2.0 will be sold for less than $1000 per developer.

http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2005/10/06/flex-20- announced-with-more-affordable-pricing/
While the current version of Flex costs some US$12,000, Flex 2 will cost less than US$1,000 for the basic components described above. Although you're constrained to communicating with the server via XML data transfer and SOAP Web Services, you can certainly implement anything you can do with AJAX and DHTML, only with a richer GUI. What's missing from the package is the server-side component of the Flex framework, which has been split into a separate product for Flex 2: Flex Enterprise Services 2.

Flex Enterprise Services 2 will come with the big per-CPU price tag, but will be significantly upgraded from the server-side facilities provided by Flex 1. The main focus of the enhanced package is the transparent availability of server-side resources (such as database records and enterprise services) within Flex applications.

-Don

The OpenLaszlo compiler is being rewritten to support the more efficient Flash 9 runtime, as well as other runtimes like DHTML/AJAX:
http://wiki.openlaszlo.org/Legals_Project
http://wiki.openlaszlo.org/Legals_Project_Plan

SWF9 Runtime Goals

The immediate goal of the swf9 porting project is to take advantage of the performance improvements in swf9 (AVM2). The swf9 vm is 10x faster for low-level stuff, with types another 2x or so. A secondary goal is to enable access to new features of AVM2, especially where these features are or will also be supported by other runtimes (e.g., regular expressions, E4X support deferred from intial release). It is not a goal of this project to add these new features. For example, it is outside the scope of this project to add regular expressions or E4X to the OpenLaszlo platform. However, this project should leave the platform in a state where it is easier to add these features in a way that has support on at least one swf and one non-swf target.

The OpenLaszlo server is a Java servlet that compiles LZX applications into executable binaries for targeted run-time environments. OpenLaszlo currently targets the Flash Player, versions SWF6, SWF7 and SWF8. The version now in development, code-named "Legals", will also target SWF9 and traditional DHTML as deployment targets by end of 2006.

But of course Flex locks you into Flash! If not, then please tell me what other runtimes does Flex support, besides Flash? Can you compile Flex programs into DHTML that runs in the browser without Flash, the way you can do with the new version of OpenLaszlo? Will Flash ever support Microsoft Avalon, the way Laszlo plans to? Or will it ALWAYS require the Flash player, and directly expose many Flash specific features instead of abstracting them the way OpenLaszlo does?

And how did you make the conceptual leap from "more affordable pricing" to "*FREE*"? There's a world of difference between Adobe offering a free non-commercial evaluation for a product they charge a steep per-developer and per-server license for, and true Free Open Source Software like OpenLaszlo. Can you please tell me what the "big per-CPU price tag" will be, or did Adobe make you sign an NDA before telling you that?

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flexbuilder2/
How much will Flex Builder 2.0 cost?
Flex Builder 2.0, which includes a license for the Flex framework, will be licensed on a per seat basis, similar to other integrated development environments. Final pricing is not yet available, but Flex Builder 2.0 will be sold for less than $1000 per developer.

http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2005/10/06/flex-20- announced-with-more-affordable-pricing/
While the current version of Flex costs some US$12,000, Flex 2 will cost less than US$1,000 for the basic components described above. Although you're constrained to communicating with the server via XML data transfer and SOAP Web Services, you can certainly implement anything you can do with AJAX and DHTML, only with a richer GUI. What's missing from the package is the server-side component of the Flex framework, which has been split into a separate product for Flex 2: Flex Enterprise Services 2.

Flex Enterprise Services 2 will come with the big per-CPU price tag, but will be significantly upgraded from the server-side facilities provided by Flex 1. The main focus of the enhanced package is the transparent availability of server-side resources (such as database records and enterprise services) within Flex applications.

-Don

Were you at openlazlo.org (parked domain) or openlaSzlo.org/ (the site we're discussing)?

Works fine in my Linux-based Firefox.

In fact, Firefox 1.5 seems to be their reference platform for the initial DHTML version (which is newer than the Flash front-end), though they plan to target Firefox and IE, and are "reasonably confident" about Opera and Safari. I tried their DHTML demo (a photo management app) in Opera 9 beta 1, and while parts of it worked, it wouldn't actually display any of the thumbnails. Eh, beta browser plus beta site.

Anyway, you might want to check your spelling: it's www.openlaszlo.org -- don't forget the s before the z.

Works fine in my Linux-based Firefox.

In fact, Firefox 1.5 seems to be their reference platform for the initial DHTML version (which is newer than the Flash front-end), though they plan to target Firefox and IE, and are "reasonably confident" about Opera and Safari. I tried their DHTML demo (a photo management app) in Opera 9 beta 1, and while parts of it worked, it wouldn't actually display any of the thumbnails. Eh, beta browser plus beta site.

Anyway, you might want to check your spelling: it's www.openlaszlo.org -- don't forget the s before the z.

Did you see Pandora listed in the article? That's a fully fledged, and nice app. Also Laszlo mail is installed as the default webmail for Earthlink subscribers? And of course... there's this list of apps! :)

Firstly, Google cache.

I've been coding in Laszlo for almost a year now for a new product my company is launching soon, and I have to say it's a great language to use. A very easy way to create great web applications while still being able to write completely Object Orientated code... There's absolutely zero need to code in a WYSIWYG style method ala visual basic or the like, our application dynamically loads in its objects and layout from a db, completely configurable... it's all very nice.

The article itself is quite a nice summary of what Laszlo is I suppose. It does seem to harp on a bit about PHP as a back end, when there is nothing tying laszlo to php at all... we were using Ruby, now we're using Java, and are able o talk directly to Java classes from within Laszlo code using a JavaRPC structure. As the Laszlo server is a Java app, it all sits together nicely.

Also it's good to see it mentioning the alternate runtime of DHTML which is currently able to be played with at Openlaszlo.org (currently in pre-beta). So, in the future you'll be able to write your code and chose to render it to Flash OR DHMTL or Both... it's all very nice.

Is there anything that people who are interesting in Laszlo would like to know from someone who's been coding in it for a while? As while I'm not a zealot of it or anything, I do like it a lot, and just would love to see as many people as possible using it. :)

as others have reported, it's already slashdotted. coral cache has the same page (http://www.donhopkins.com.nyud.net:8080/drupal/no de/124) but, is this maybe it?

I have mentioned Laszlo a fair few times here... but Laszlo does what this framework does, but far better, far more extensively, in an easier to code in language (XML + Javascript), and can render your output to Flash OR DHTML from the same source code (note that the DHTML output is in pre-beta form).

Hurray for Google for providing this, and it'll be nice for some... but it's not revolutionary.

I have mentioned this language/product before here on Slashdot, but that's because I program in it everyday... but Laszlo does what you want. The biggest thing that scares 'tech heads' away from it is that it's output currently is Flash. Now I personally think it's a excellent thing, huge penetration of plugin, almost completely guaranteed same result in all browsers/operating systems, supurb animation an interaction ability. It makes for a great user experience.

However they now have a pre-beta DHTML runtime option as well. So you can have the same source code (written in the Laszlo language which is XML + Javascript) delivery either Flash OR DHMTL.

Check it out (including a demo of DHMTL vs Flash from the one source) at OpenLaszlo.

And my PR for my current programming language is done for today! :P

Note: Open Source SimFaux OpenLaszlo Code Now Available via Subversion, so you can add your own characters and content!

SimFaux is an Interactive Faux News Simulation Game, a parody of Fox News, now online and FauxCasting from the Huffington Post Contagious Festival!

SimFaux is like a cross between The Sims and Mystery Science Theater, that lets you sit back and channel surf, or take control and create your own Faux News TV programs! It's pronounced "Sim Foe", of course!

Free live interactive SimFaux Simualtion Game (requires Flash, preferably version 8): http://simfaux.cf.huffingtonpost.com/

Screencast and demo video: http://www.simfaux.com/

I just posted the latest version of SimFaux, which currently has:

8 Simulated Characters with graphics and sound bites:
1) Arianna Huffington
2) Dick Cheney
3) George W Bush
4) Frank Zappa
5) Ann Coulter
6) Al Franken
7) Triumph the Insult Comic Dog
8) Bill O'Reilly

Channel Surfing (8 different channels with many different programs)

Create your own TV program:
Select any character, video feed to other information to display in each frame.
Invite any character onto your show.
Tell characters to talk, shut up, go away.

WebCam Support:
Put yourself on-screen and interview and argue with the characters!

Streaming Video Clips with keyword triggers.

Video backgrounds and overlays.

Keyword driven AI simulation:
All content is tagged and triggered with keywords, used by simulation to decide which video clips and sound bites to play.

Keyword display:
See active keywords, hide and focus on keywords to drive simulation

Meaningless graphs and chart-junk.

Interactive surveys with loaded questions and ballot box stuffing.

Teleprompter talking points with reference links so you can really decide for yourself.

Faux Chat simulated Internet chat room:
All character sound bites go into chat.
Amusing chat logs with keyword triggers that effect simulation.
Type text and keywords into chat to reply to characters and effect simulation.

SimFaux is written in OpenLaszlo, which is an Open Source XML/JavaScript based programming language for rich zero-install AJAX web applications:

http://www.openlaszlo.org/

SimFaux is a constantly evolving open-ended simulation game, which makes it easy to drop in new content (movies, characters, sound bites, text talking points, chat transcripts) all tagged up with keywords, so they play off of each other!

I want to enable other people to start FauxCasting their own stuff! So I will soon publish the source code for SimFaux as Open Source, to serve as an OpenLaszlo programming example, and so other people can modify it an add their own content, videos, characters, sound bites, games, etc! Please check the site http://www.simfaux.com/ for more information.

I am continuously adding more late breaking content and up-to-the-minute news, so please check back again later, and tell your friends about SimFaux!

-Don Hopkins (dhopkins@DonHopkins.com)

From Stanislaw Lem's "Non-Serviam" (1971):

(Personetics): A "world" for personoid "inhabitants" can be prepared in a couple of hours... A specific personoid activity serves as a triggering mechanism, setting in motion a production process that will gradually augment and define itself; in other words, the world surrounding these beings takes on an unequivocalness only in accordance with their own behavior... From four to seven personoids are optimal, at least for the development of speech and typical exploratory activity, and also for 'culturization'... It is possible to 'accommodate' up to one thousand personoids... Many different philosophies (ontologies and epistemologies) have arisen among them... I can enlarge their world or reduce it, speed up its time or slow it down, alter the mode and means of their perception; I can liquidate them, divide them, multiply them, transform the very ontological foundation of their existence...

On the lighter side of personetics... I'm developing an open source "Personetics" system called "SimFaux", which I've applied to parody Fox News, so it currently includes simulations of George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Frank Zappa, Arianna Huffington, Al Franken and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.

I've published the SimFaux source code and content as Free Open Source, so you can make your own characters, experiment with the existing ones, transform the very ontological foundation of their existence, see how the keyword based simulation works, extend it with your own rules and content, learn how to build interactive interfaces and simulations with streaming video in OpenLaszlo, etc.

-Don

Open Laszlo is also a nice product. It still mostly requires flash on the client-side (they have an alpha-ish support for rendering in DHTML), but the server-side is licensed under the CPL (a.k.a. what Eclipse uses).

It's completely dependent on what language I'm coding in.

When I was coding in PHP... php.net was an absolute godsend of being both a reference to all the functions and objects and a repository of user's experiences and tips for the items... almost all of my php issues were solved via that site.

When I've been doing Javascript code (which isn't a huge amount I'll admit), then I've found W3School's reference pages to be invaluable.

Now that I'm doing my coding in the open source language Laszlo I've found their included documentation that comes with the developer install (web based and with live examples to tinker with), and the community coding forums to be an enormous help, and have made learning and getting a lot out of this language really not that hard.

I really think that trying to localise coding support isn't going to work... the coders should just make use of the best forums and resources for the language they're using. Each time I have to use a new language I have a new folder in my bookmarks for reference pages and forums for that language that I find on the web... you find almost everything you need that way really.

And know how to use Google damn well!

OpenLaszlo is a high level toolkit for writing GUI apps in the browser. Supports Flash and DHTML is in the works. www.openlaszlo.org click on the DHTML demo.

Yeah, OpenLaszlo's been "asynchronous javascript and XML" since its inception, even before the XmlHttpRequest support.

And we're demoing a pre-alpha DHTML runtime now:
    labs.openlaszlo.org

(I work for Laszlo Systems.)

I've just discovered OpenLaszlo earlier this week. It's a (now) open sourced web RAD system. It compiles into Flash files so almost anyone can run the apps, and it feels a lot less hacky than Javascript ever did... blasted browser wars, "standards", and all. Pretty interesting technology -- especially if you can't wrap your mind around building an application in the Flash "everything is a movie" model. The IDE is an Eclipse plugin.

I think the original point to my post was that AJAX is nice but I don't think that the standards are there yet.

OpenOffice Impress has a SWF export and http://openlaszlo.org/ is SWF based use your C skills to improve these (nether are at the level to write many games yet).

Or try:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/swfsource/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/libswf/
http://sswf.sourceforge.net/

SWF may only be partially open (fully documented and encouraged to create application that write SWF, but forbiden to create competing players), but it is a lot more open then the rest of the PSP!

Even OpenLaszlo (widget system using flash, and being open-source) can be good for this, enabling a good user interaction (just like a real desktop app), and permitting to use any server-side language to do the right job...

I mean, isn't that a good solution ? :) (as well as AJAX, but with less work, since you use real widgets)

I never understand why flash / laszlo ( http://www.openlaszlo.org/ ) apps never make these lists. I don't want to bash ajax, but XmlHttpRequest + javascript doesn't a solution make. I find something like LaszloMail ( http://wwwl.laszlomail.com/ ) to be better than something like gmail or yahoo's ajax mail client (which I use predominantly).

It's really the only game in town if you want to write desktop-style apps that live in the browser

I'm curious to know if your team looked into OpenLaszlo. There are some pretty nice apps built on it—the Behr Paint ColorSmart tool used an early version (before they opened the source), and I think Pandora is built on it as well. I'd really like to hear from someone who's compared the two. I have a database-driven Flash project coming up, and I can buy Flex if I have a good reason to, but if Laszlo will work it would sure be nice.

Not trying to spruik it or anything, but I'm currently working on a project of making a webapp using Laszlo.

It's an open source language/server for creating flash based applications.

We've found it to be very impressive how much you can do with so little code... and it's nice to have a proper OO backend to a flash frontend... the flash frontend means we can:

a) Make our interface very pretty and like a 'normal' application
b) Means it works in pretty much any browser...
c) on pretty much all platforms...
d) without a download of any plugin in most cases (just because of the penetration of flash)

How about same language - different platform? OpenLaszlo - XML based language + Javascript, compiles to SWF (Flash), much faster/easier development than typical Ajax frameworks and libraries. It does require Flash, but 90%+ of browsers support it already.

http://openlaszlo.org/

The Pandora app was written using OpenLaszlo ( http://www.openlaszlo.org/ ), a free software rich internet application development platform. Why do you suppose they did that instead of using Macromedia's tools and runtime?

OpenLaszlo beats the pants off of Flex and its free (as in speech). Why anyone would bother with the whole AJAX kludge when Laszlo is around escapes me. The beauty of Laszlo's databinding architecture must be seen to be believed, not to mention the animation and UI capabilities.

It is also worth pointing out that Laszlo Systems is working on a DHTML renderer for Laszlo so it won't be dependent on the flash player.

There is a very active and helpful developer community and the documentation is very well done and complete (unlike Flex).

Anyway, my $.02

-Clay

<animator attribute="opacity" to="0" duration="500" />
or
this.animate("opacity",0,500,false);

Presently I'm tending towards Open Laszlo, but it's flash based which I'm not a fan of. However, if it hides cross-browser issues, then it's a huge plus for me. Laszlo allows e.g. a text note to be bound to an xpath in a memory cached document.

It has. It's called OpenLaszlo and it's pretty cool.