As everyone is getting ready for the Christmas season we almost missed some really good news in the rich Internet application/rich media applications space for 2009: the OpenLaszlo team announced a first stable release of OpenLaszlo 4.2 with support for the SWF9/Flash9 runtime! The SWF9 runtime will give a decent performance boost to all Flash based OpenLaszlo applications (could be up to 500-600% of performance improvement over the SWF8 runtime.
SWF5, SWF6, SWF7, SWF8, DHTML and now SWF9
Since I started using OpenLaszlo (with version 2.1 as a commercial trial) there have been several Flash versions which have been supported as well as the very cool DHTML runtime (thanks, Max, for making that happen!). Every Flash version up to now meant a lot of extra work around the internal Flash bytecode compiler. For the SWF9 runtime the open source strategy of OpenLaszlo paid off in a very different way: Since Adobe open sourced the Flex SDK (as a response to the fact that OpenLaszlo was open sourced in 2004?) the OpenLaszlo team could utilize the Flex compiler to generate SWF9 bytecode of of LZX. Internally OpenLaszlo converts the LZX code into JavaScript2 code, which in turn is compiled into either JavaScript 1.5, Flash8 bytecode or ActionScript3 (for the SWF9 runtime). The AS3 code is in then run through the Flex compiler. A great way to utilize another open source compiler to add support for a new runtime to OpenLaszlo!
My 50’s months of using OpenLaszlo
December 2008 marks my 50th months of using the OpenLaszlo technology! The first OpenLaszlo application I ever saw was the old Laszlo Dashboard, an early prototype of what we might call a “webtop” nowadays (UI using windows, audio and video player, drag & drop support, all running in the browser). But OpenLaszlo had more than to offer than that: An amazing programming language – the LZX language – developed by a group of software development stars, taking UI programming and the workflow between designers and programmers to a new level.
“Designers are first class citizens”
One of those exceptional software developers at Laszlo was Oliver Steele, the former OpenLaszlo director (and am amazing expert when it comes to open source team leadership, dynamic languages, compilers, and – on top of that – presenting and explaining technology in a very understandable way). When Oliver introduced himself and Laszlo in a mail to the Laszlo developers mailing list back in 2004, he made it very clear, what he thought was so special about the company and the OpenLaszlo project:
One thing I like about Laszlo Systems is that designers are first-class
citizens too; I’m hoping we can extend this to the Laszlo developer
community too. I’m excited about the idea of a visual editor because
it would open up the platform for more designers.I’m also excited about getting our work into the hands of people who
like it, instead of just those who already have a targeted project that
can justify paying the $$ for a server license. I look forward to
helping anyone who cares to understand enough of the architecture of
the system to do what they want with it.
If the technology is so good, why is the adoption rate no higher?
Based on my experience there are two key factors (besides an expensive marketing machine the larger players can afford to run) for adoption of open source technologies – given that the technology is good and mature: Availability of tools and participation of the community in the development process. And that’s exactly where the OpenLaszlo technology lacks behind competitors like Adobe Flex, GWT or the Ajax toolkits and libraries like dojo, JQuery, etc. The tools are not as good for beginners as the once you get with Adobe Flex or GWT (Flex Builder, IntelliJ’s Flex support, GWT Eclipse plug-in), and OpenLaszlo appears to be more complex than the JavaScript libraries and projects – which it makes it difficult to become a contributor or committer to the core system.
OpenLaszlo still is one of the most advanced RIA technologies available – and has been a trendsetter for things like
- compiling from a dedicated XML-based UI description language to bytecode
- using a powerful constraint-mechanism
- connecting to XML datasets with an advanced replication system
- multi-runtime approach, supporting as different runtimes as Flash bytecode and DHTML
- enabling animation and state management in a very simple and effective way
- and with OpenLaszlo 4.2, a brand new JavaScript2 to SWF8/AS3/JavaScript 1.5 compiler
2009 will be exciting for anyone using OpenLaszlo: there have been rumors of a powerful OpenLaszlo IDE, and it looks like the OpenLaszlo components will be finally be overhauled (based on the latest Wiki entries). Which reminds me of David Temkin once saying: “We might not be moving as quickly as others, but we will constantly continue to move on…” (correct me, if I misquoted you here, David!). And the SWF10 format is bytecode compatibel with Flash9, I can imagine the whole OpenLaszlo team is not too unhappy about that fact!
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Maybe it’s a paradox but swf8, DHTML and now swf9 support, seem to make OpenLaszlo more flexible than Flex :-)
“2009 will be exciting for anyone using OpenLaszlo”
Absolutely!