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20041005 Tuesday October 05, 2004

Laszlo Goes Open Source It's awesome to see that Laszlo has gone open source. The main reason I haven't dug into Macromedia's Flex is because it's $12K per CPU. I agree that this it's probably worth it if you're after a nice user experience - but most of my clients want open source, and only open source. It's tough to find folks that'll pay for JIRA even - if you can believe that.

With Lazlo going open source, it opens a whole new world for me. Now there's an opportunity to use this technology with clients. Of course, now I have learn the stuff so I can be productive enough to convince them to use it. I may even add a Lazlo front-end to AppFuse, but probably not until next year, after Tapestry and JSF. Hmmm, if JSF is really all that - can it render a Laszlo UI? That'd be wicked. Posted in Java at Oct 05 2004, 09:32:06 AM MDT 14 Comments

Comments:

you get me smiling on that JSF + Laslo, thanks!
Do we belive in a toothfery also?
"jsf needs something other than jsp" - ha, ha. Swing! I know, you would think there are some uses of JSF. :-)))

Posted by Vic Cekvenich on October 05, 2004 at 11:05 AM MDT #

I've never heard of Laszlo until today when this announcement popped up a few times in my feed reader. Very, very impressive. If you're new to Laszlo, you should check out the interactive learning demo, http://www.laszlosystems.com/lps/laszlo-in-ten-minutes/. You can create the underlying XML files and have them render right there in another frame. Very cool indeed. Their site is very well put together and they have some pretty cool sample apps.

My last client and the one that I am working with currently have complex client side business rules that have to be generated in Javascript which become quite a daunting task (they are also locked into Win IE 5.5 because of it). Laszlo looks like it could be a great alternative to HTML/DHTML/Javascript. Would definitely love to see what it can do for AppFuse.

Posted by Keller on October 05, 2004 at 12:49 PM MDT #

Macromedia giving away Flex. http://news.com.com/Macromedia+giving+away+Flex/2110-7345_3-5397484.html?part=rss&tag=5397484&subj=news.7345.20

Posted by chao on October 05, 2004 at 02:26 PM MDT #

Macromedia's not giving away Flex - it's just allowing non-profits to use it for free. Why use that when you can get the source for Laszlo, use it however you want, and make any changes you want? Plus Laszlo is deployed now on many popular sites - I dont know of any Flex apps deployed on a large scale. Folks need to realize that Flex was created as a response to Laszlo - which has been around for years and is already into it's 2nd generation of development.

Posted by andrew on October 05, 2004 at 06:24 PM MDT #

I am so glad this is on your radar. I looked at Laszlo 6 months ago and dismissed it and Flex for the same reasons you had avoided Flex. Now I am on the "whole new world" page with you. Laszlo plus AppFuse. Man that would be sweet.

Posted by thirdshift on October 06, 2004 at 01:59 PM MDT #

the *BIG* difference between Laszlo and Flex is that Laszlo generates Flash 5 code and Flex generates Flash 7. The latter supports actionscript 2.0, which is a much more capable language than version 1.0. This means you can delegate a lot more logic and processing to the client side using a Flex generated app than a Laszlo one... something to keep in mind.

Posted by tanguyr on October 08, 2004 at 02:53 AM MDT #

tanguyr I'd be interested in knowing what I won't be able to do with Laszlo because it generates Flash 5 code instead of 7. Any comments or links you can throw my way?

Posted by thirdshift on October 08, 2004 at 06:44 AM MDT #

I found a discussion related to Flash 5 & 7 over on the Laszlo bulletin boards. Note that this thread started before they open sourced their product and the thread contains a little, now irrelevant, back and forth on pricing.

See http://www.laszlosystems.com/developers/community/forums/showthread.php?s=8bb12803632a90fc6e033f3c7ed5795a&threadid=679&highlight=flash+7

Posted by thirdshift on October 08, 2004 at 08:37 AM MDT #

its 12k for 2 cpus not per

Posted by me on October 09, 2004 at 12:31 PM MDT #

thirdshift: the big difference is the availability of flash remoting (introduced in flash mx = flash 6) - more info here. Basically, a more structured way to exchange data with a server - in flash 5 you call a function called loadVariables and retrieve urls (strings, but can also be xml packets), whereas with flash remoting a lot of the headache of handling web services is hidden from the developer. Note that the link above is kinda old (presales stuff from the last generation of flash) and that a number of server-side technologies for flash remoting (including some open source ones) have emerged since then (see amfphp for example)

Posted by tanguyr on October 11, 2004 at 11:33 AM MDT #

Can you incorporate laszlo with struts and tiles?

Posted by mikemiller on October 12, 2004 at 03:05 PM MDT #

I have implemented my laszlo application over appfuse(hibernate and struts actions)..it works really fine. Laszlo and Appfuse really make an interesting combination and its really easy to integrate both frameworks together. javed , http://javedmandary.blogspot.com

Posted by javed mandary on February 21, 2005 at 04:40 AM MST #

I have implemented laszlo. So far, just played with XML file and incorporated. It took me 20 minutes to make this photo album Amazing. check this: http://www.bma.us.com/indexflash.html Laszlo Rocks. Acc to my experience, it is a bit slow on my development machine, but on server ( running linux ), it has not given me any problems so far. Would love to integrate Appfuse + laszlo ? Vaneet

Posted by Vaneet on September 01, 2005 at 12:02 AM MDT #

I have implemented laszlo. So far, just played with XML file and incorporated. It took me 20 minutes to make this photo album Amazing. check this: http://www.bma.us.com/indexflash.html Laszlo Rocks. Acc to my experience, it is a bit slow on my development machine, but on server ( running linux ), it has not given me any problems so far. Would love to integrate Appfuse + laszlo ? Vaneet

Posted by Vaneet on September 01, 2005 at 12:03 AM MDT #

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Matt Raible is a Web Architecture Consultant specializing in open source frameworks.
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