Beyond DHTML - Laszlo on Rails

Web 2.0 movement - a design movement.

• Minimalist
• Attractive
• User customization - pimp my site (MySpace, blogs)
• Audio/video

The Holy Grail!

• Rich apps that is self-updating and doesn't require downloading
• Desktop apps need to be downloaded, installed, updated
• Pandora/Music Genome Project
  • Written in Laszlo

OpenLaszlo

• Outstanding documentation
• LZX language - XML-based
• Form widgets
• XML Datasets - Communications with databases
• XPath empowers views
• Visuals - animations
• Powerful language
  • Declarative syntax
  • Object-oriented
  • Prototype-based - mixins
  • Delegates
  • States
• Components - skinnable
• Components - write your own

(group hug for those of us who hate flash)

Don't hate the player; hate the game.

False dichotomies:

• Flash vs. DHTML
• Ajax vs. Laszlo
• fullscreen vs. nothing
• bald vs. sexy

The DHTML runtime is part of "Project Legals" - target September for developers, December for general use. Goal: support OpenLaszlo for multiple clients/platforms.

(screenshot of Gliffy - sp? - Laszlo-based "Visio")

Laszlo on Rails

• Installation
  • gem install ropenlaszlo
  • rails app
  • cd app
  • ruby script/plugin install svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/laszlo-plugin/tags/
• Full REST API
• REST + CRUD = CRUSTED? CRUDEST?
• Possibilities
  • Rich web "widgets"
  • Pass data back and forth between clients - (e.g. chat)
  • In-browser development suite
• But...
  • Cost to consuming resources
  • Accessibility, searching, printing - all advantages of HTML
  • Performance is not stellar
  • The best solution is a combination of HTML and Laszlo
• Still...
  • A very powerful environment with many possibilities
  • Web development/HTML a step backwards for UI
  • Laszlo opens options for UI up again

http://laszloonrails.com

很正确的评价。我们一年前在javaeye或者ajaxian上的讨论因为缺乏充分的实践所以谁也说服不了谁。Laszlo他最大的优点就是扔掉了纷杂的现代界面表达方式，不必费尽心思让所有浏览器表现一样，用它的方式去建立应用，和rails一样，从头到尾渗透出敏捷的思想。这也是很多人把Laszlo和Rails拼命揉在一起的原因吧。
很快，玩Laszlo就2年了，已经没有那么大的劲做这么美丽的评价，Laszlo有它的不足之处，升级缓慢，必须依赖java容器。对于开源软件来说，升级缓慢不一定说明贡献者少，这样一个源码打包下来都超过100M的东西而且用了python,c和几十个java类库，贡献的难度也很大。不过，的确，要做的就是一个很复杂的东西。没有必要不停的开发UI，稍微有点经验的人可以自己去写UI，Laszlo把网撒大了。
"必须依赖java容器"使我不想现在就尝试"Laszlo on Rails"，其实可以单凭ruby去重新去做Laszlo，肯定比这种方式好。而且，现在Laszlo也在拼命的搞DHTML输出，重新做的话甚至可以去掉Flash不考虑。