Although users think that an IDE that supports drag and drop functionality is incredibly useful, experience has shown that it isn't. For instance, Adobe's Flex Builder has just the features that you're requesting: both a source and design perspective (visual snippet side). The design perspective is generally used by new users for a couple of weeks, until they reach a certain level of proficiency and then never gets used again. It turns out that it really doesn't deliver meaningful functionality -- think of it as training wheels --, so its usage is generally dropped once developers become marginally proficient.
To address these issues, Adobe is creating Catalyst (a separate product), which provides a much more comprehensive design approach towards building RIAs. This is a very ambitious product -- that is vastly beyond the scope of Laszlo -- and will probably require several releases until Adobe gets the paradigm correctly. Catalyst also requires extensive tie-ins into their other products such as Illustrator and Photoshop. It appears likely that the next release of Flex Builder will simply drop the design perspective and replace it with features that support Catalyst. In a perfect world, Catalyst could be easily fitted with a Laszlo-specific back-end but I strongly doubt that is legally or technically possible. But it makes no sense for Laszlo to waste its limited resources creating such a limiting programming approach as visual snippets. Norman Klein author: Laszlo in Action On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 4:07 AM, cem sonmez <[email protected]> wrote: > I completely agree with you. I have shared my thoughts in an earlier thread, > that is about a visual openlaszlo editor. > There is an Eclipse plugin called Spket [1] which is a useful tool to create > openlaszlo applications. But it just supports syntax highlighting and type > autocompletion and a visual snippet side. But anyway this is not a reason to > do not need a featured Openlaszo Ide. Especially while creating the visual > components in my openlaszlo applications, it takes a long time to do what I > want. It would be great to use an Openlaszlo editor developed by the > openlaszlo community. > > Kind regards. > > [1] - http://www.spket.com/ > > 2010/2/28 <[email protected]> >> >> I've been using OpenLaszlo for about 6 months now, so I am certainly not >> an expert. And I don't want to sound like a complainer. But I must say, I >> am REALLY baffled at the lack of a full-featured IDE (or plugin) for >> OpenLaszlo. I really like OL, and I want to develop with it. But the lack >> of IDE support is really a drawback, compared to other current development >> environments . And I have seen this sentiment mentioned frequently by >> others. With the seemingly-strong community out there, I would expect a >> nice full-featured IDE available, sponsored by OL. >> >> I have tried most of the third-party available offerings, and don't get me >> wrong, they are certainly better than a text editor, and I greatly thank >> their contributors. However they mostly seem 1) stalled in their >> development and/or not updated, and 2) only have basic features beyond >> common syntax highlighting. What about project-wide "intellisense" type >> autocompletion support of Laszlo's mixed XML and Javascript code? None of >> them have this, to my knowledge. Am I missing something, perhaps? I've >> searched and searched. It would be hard to believe someone not having >> discussed this already. >> >> I think this is necessary to be competitive and gain traction, and would >> really be a big factor in attracting more developers into the community, >> thus benefiting everyone all around. Is there some reason OpenLaszlo has >> not got behind such an effort? Or maybe they are, but it has not come to >> fruition yet? I certainly would like to have something to look forward >> to. A current Eclipse plugin would be just awesome. No need to re-invent a >> whole new IDE framework. The available ones for Netbeans and Eclipse are >> good starts. Couldn't they be updated and taken to fruition? >> >> Thanks... > > > > -- > Cem SONMEZ >
