Hi Lee,
Thanks for your email! There is some (very limited) docuemntation on
how the components are put together here:
http://www.openlaszlo.org/lps4.2/docs/component-design/
It has some information on how the current components are put together,
in case you'd like to build your own resources. This URL talks more
about the inheritance heirarchy, in case you want to start with a base
component and build up from there:
http://labs.openlaszlo.org/trunk-nightly/laszlo-explorer/#_lzbookmark=Components|Class%20Hierarchy
The good news is, we're working on a whole new set of components for OL
5 that are more modern in every way: they are procedurally drawn, vector
based and skinnable via CSS. They should fit the bill for you, but it
will be a litte while before they're released, and it may take some time
for a full set to become available. We plan to work with the community
to accelerate this process, of course.
As for the IDE, I personally feel tools based around Eclipse can be
pretty heavy. There have been several attempts at building one, but
there's unfortunately nothing officially supported at the moment.
Welcome, and let us know how we can help further your OpenLaszlo adventures!
Regards,
Max Carlson
OpenLaszlo.org
On 4/21/10 7:45 AM, Lee Jenkins wrote:
Hello all,
I've searched the OL site as well as googled, but haven't found much on
extending the existing skins. I have poked around the OL installation
and seen the components/resources directory and it's contained .png and
.swf image files, but was wondering if there is some kind of manifest
that I can look at that documents the specific images that need to be
replicated.
Although I'm a long time windows programmer (mostly Delphi and .net C#)
I've been branching out to RIA web applications lately using mostly
Adobe Flex. As a matter of fact, I'm developing a Delphi/FreePascal
based server framework that proxies internal widgets to a client UI. The
premise is that I could plug in a Flex UI, Android UI, Object-C UI, etc
while leaving the server side Model and Controller untouched.
I looked at OpenLaszlo a while back but didn't take a long look at it
for one reason or another. Now over the last week or so, I've
re-discovered OpenLaszlo and I have to say I like the idea of
cross-compiling to Flash or DHTML and that the DHMTL produced has fairly
good performance though a flash based distribution of a OL app seems to
perform better.
At any rate, I like just about everything concerning OL with the
exception of two detractions:
1. IDE support. I've looked at the offerings non seem to be mature.
Though this is definitely not a show stopper for me, it is nice to have
a good ide. Not to mention that Eclipse based IDE's are dogs in terms of
performance and resource consumption IME. No offense to the Java devs.
2. Slick skins. The existing skins seem a little dated in terms of the
chrome involved.
I believe both of these issues can be remedied in one way or another. If
I work with OL long enough, I'll get frustrated and end up writing an
IDE or at least decent script editor with code suggestions, etc. The
skins issue seems to be negated by the fact that is possible to create
additional themes/skins though I'm not certain at this point how
feasible it is to create new themes.
Everything else quite impressive about the OpenLaszlo framework and I
plan to get started on something soon if I can overcome the skins
problem fairly simply.
Kudos to the devs and contributors.
--
Warm Regards,
Lee
