Jeff Steiner wrote: >Lazslo, while the samples look great, is still based upon Flash player 5 >(Beta 3 of Lazslo is player 6). It is one of those things where you have to >wonder - how does Lazslo know what to extend of the Flash Player. The >people that are contributing to it make guesses and try to extend the >capabilities as far as they can, but they are still limited in their >knowledge. I have never seen an API to the Flash player made readily >available to the public. Also - as the Flash Player gets more complicated >it will become more difficult to code hooks into the player to give >developers the same functionality that is provided by Flex, and Breeze, and >Flash, ........ > > As a Flash developer, I'd like to chime in here..
The fact that Lazslo works on Flash Player 5 really isn't an issue. In fact, I'd say it's a bonus! Here's why: * Because Lazslo outputs to Flash Player 5, it has a larget target audience. See the penetration stats: http://www.macromedia.com/software/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html -- FP 5 is 97%. FP7 is 82% - so apps created in Laszlo have a better chance of being viewed * There are no "older is slower" arguments. The v7 player will play a v5 swf faster than the v5 player, because the v7 player itself is faster than the v5 player. * The internals are abstracted away. Right now your Lazslo code publishes to .swf, but it's not tied to the Flash Player in any way - there are no MovieClip references, etc in your lazslo code. In fact, you don't even use ActionScript, you write in JavaScript. There's nothing to stop someone from writing a new "player" and with a few tweaks to the Laszlo compilation process you could have output for that new player. When you develop an application, do you really care about the internal API calls of Flash Player 7? If I'm a Lazslo developer, I say no.. I know what tags I can use in my markup, I know what the APIs are, and I use them and get a *working* .swf file. As long as it works, that's all I care about. If SWF5 is all it takes to make it work, then that's cool. Is there anything in v7 SWF that would benefit Lazslo apps? Not really. Some of the new things added in FP 7 over FP 6 is case sensitivty, depth management functions (getNextHighestDepth..) , context menu, etc,. The biggest change would probably be embedded video, and that may be a show stopper for some.. but it's rare that an "application" needs video in it. FP 6 adds some things over FP5 like ShardObjects, so I can see how upgrading to v6 in that respect would be benefitical. FP 6 also added different event handlers than FP5 (.onPress, vs on (press)) - but that has 0 effect on how I code my Lazslo markup. The FP6 style event handlers are meant to make AS coding easier, but Lazslo doesn't care about that because it has it's own coding model. The fact that Lazslo accomplishes what it does on an old version of the SWF format is not a drawback, it's a benefit. There's really no reason to use SWF7 if everything you need to do can be accomplished in SWF5. The fact that Lazslo separates itself from the Flash Player is another benefit as well.. If something should ever happen, maybe legal issues or whatever, Lazslo can output to, say, Java applets or whatever, since the code is all abstracted from the VM and the compilation process handles the dirty work of putting your code into a format the VM can understand. -d Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flexcoders/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
