Laszlo is a Flash competitor and may also be a competitor to MM Flex
nee Royale.
I am not sure of the latter because I have not seen either Flex or
Royale.
Laszlo is used, like Flash, to create the client side of RIA apps.
Laszlo code is written in XML and _javascript_ as opposed to the
Movie/ActionScript construct of Flash.
Laszlo code is compiled into a Flash swf file and imbedded into an HTML
page just as Flash is.
The Laszlo client app can make requests of a server-side app written in
almost anything (including CFMX).
Server requests are made with a standard URL with optional name/value
pairs -- so far, I have not determined if data can be passed as form
variables.
Data returned to a Laszlo client consists of a single, valid XML packet.
The XML packet is trivial to create in CFMX with standard output
functions -- you don't need to do any XML parsing, etc -- just create
XML tags around your data -- similar to placing HTML tags around your
data.
One tutorial takes you through creating a simple (and quite nice) data
maintenance application -- The RIA client side is 72 lines of XML code.
Thish creates a Flash movie that:
-- initially displays all the records in the db in tabular form.
-- if you click on a record, the space beneath the row of data expands
to show a pre-filled update/delete form
-- if you click on the heading row, the space below expands to show an
Add Record form
-- this is all done clientside.
-- if you click on the add/up/delet buttons the data entry display
disappears and the space for it contracts & the data is passed to the
server.
Nothing special here, except it is intuitive, pleasant and written in 1
page of readable, maintainable code,
I think I like it.
It is much more intuitive (to me) than the Flash paradigm.
They have a very nice sample shopping cart ala PetStore with a few
added goodies -- you can drag and drop items (images) to the cart or
wish list.
you can expand or collapse the catalog display to show the cart,
wishlist, and or checkout form.
If these areas are collapsed, there is feedback when addinc items to
the cart or wishlist -- the expansion bar briefly changes color
Now the negatives:
I found a bug in the client side of the data maintenance example
(above) that I can't resolve -- their debugger isn;t much help.
Performance appears to be a little sluggish
The client-side code is 163K (gzipped) which seems high -- I have not
used their optimizer
I hate typing Laszlo
Anyway, this might be a good alternative to Flash for those of us who
are uneasy with Flash model.
HTH
Dick
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