Check out Flex 2 [adobe.com]. It's similar to OpenLaszlo; free as in beer and the source code is provided. However, applications built with Flex 2 run much faster than OpenLaszlo applications, there are a ton more features, and the programming model is better.
Yes, Flex applications utilize Flash as their virtual machine. The problem with outputting to HTML is that you then have to write to the lowest common denominator. So you loose great features like: binary sockets, vector graphics, bitmap manipulation, offline storage, JIT compiled performance, cross-domain requests, multiple file uploads, E4X, ECMAScript, etc. If you don't want any of those features, then I would recommend using a true Ajax framework. If you can do what you need with DHTML and you like
Why does everyone want to use MY computer to run THEIR code. OL might be worth a look when it is really DHTML capable, but I run NoScript to block ALL flash and most javascipt. If your site is running a Flash or JS site with no alternative access method, I'll go to your competitor.
Just like you use your computer to watch their content. The % of people deliberately blocking Flash content is very very small - just a small fraction of geeks. I doubt that your use case has much weight. That said, I am no fan of Flash sites.
So, you don't use Google Maps or any other service that uses Javascript then? I mean really, this outright hatred of Flash is ridiculous. In our case we are coding an application for use within Businesses. What this allows us to do is to not have to install any client on their pcs, not have to worry about getting updates to them, as we just update our servers with the latest version, and next time they load the app, it's brand new.
By rendering to flash you remove almost 100% of the issues of cross browser in
Think a bit larger. The Web solves an age-old distribtion problem, but at the price of losing all that rich functionality you got used to with your favorite WIMP interface. Rich Internet Apps give you the full features of a thick client, with the benefits of the web. However, our friend does point out a cosmic divide, between the traditional IT folks and their general disdain for anything "too webby." "Flash? FORGET THAT! I BLOCK IT!" And no wonder, he thinks its only used for cute calendar pop-ups. B
There's a major and important difference between Flex and OpenLaszlo: Flex is designed to lock you into Flash, and OpenLaszlo is designed to free you from Flash and enable you to deploy your application on other runtimes like DHTML. Also, OpenLaszlo is true Open Source Software, and FLEX is not. FLEX has some strict licensing restrictions about how you can use it, how you can modify it, and what you can the source code.
Why do you say that Flex 2 applications run much faster? They're both running on the same Flash player. The main overhead is rendering graphics on the screen, followed by interpreting the SWF byte codes. Why should FLEX applications be any faster then OpenLaszlo applications? What do you mean by "the programming model is better"?
Are there any application as complex as Laszlo Mail [laszlomail.com] implemented FLEX? Can you point us to any FLEX applications of similar complexity that we can test drive, and compare the speed for ourselves?
OpenLaszlo is true Open Source Software, and FLEX is not.
Can I get commit access to their svn repo? Who owns the code I contribute to OpenLaszlo?
Why do you say that Flex 2 applications run much faster? They're both running on the same Flash player.
Actually Flex 2 applications utilize the new VM in Flash 9 which in a number of benchmarks shows performance improvements of 10x to 100x.
What do you mean by "the programming model is better"?
There is a lot to cover here and I'm off to see a movie in a f
>> OpenLaszlo is true Open Source Software, and FLEX is not.
> Can I get commit access to their svn repo?
Sure. Just like any open source project, you earn your stripes and
you get commit access. And like other big open source projects,
OpenLaszlo has a review process for all commits.
Are you implying that I could get commit access to the Flex codebase? Or that Flex is open source? What are you implying?
>> What do you mean by "the programming model is better"?
> There is a
Sure. Just like any open source project, you earn your stripes and you get commit access. And like other big open source projects, OpenLaszlo has a review process for all commits. Your contributor faq [openlaszlo.org] doesn't indicate commit access, only that patches must be submitted via email. Not quite "true open source".
Are you implying that I could get commit access to the Flex codebase? Or that Flex is open source? What are you implying?
I am not trying to imply that Flex is more "open" than Laszlo, rather that Laszl
Your contributor faq doesn't indicate commit access, only that patches
must be submitted via email. Not quite "true open source".
Just like that big phony "the linux kernel"!
The fact is that not having direct committer access is (a) about to be
fixed, and (b) an infrastructure detail that doesn't detract from the
fact that we have healthy participation from the community -- our new
3.3 release contains many community-contributed bug fixes and new features.
As long as people on the FLEX team are fact-checking, could you people please correct the mis-impression that FLEX is "*FREE*"? Surely Adobe doesn't want to encourage software piracy of their products. Unbundling the SDK and giving that away under certain conditions, doesn't make the whole system free, like the entire OpenLaszlo system really and totally is. I can download and install the Microsoft.NET Framework SDK for free too, but that doesn't mean I can pirate the entire source code of the Microsoft w
Since you work on the FLEX team, could you please tell us if Adobe will continue to support SVG, and if FLEX will support SVG as an alternative runtime? And how much the developer tool and server will cost? Stuff like that...
Disclaimer: I worked on Laszlo Mail [laszlomail.com] as a contractor for Laszlo Systems. I've also developed several SVG projects, so I'm interested to know if Adobe's still supporting it. Does Adobe's SVG plug-in still hard-crash Mozilla/Firefox? That's why I gave up on SVG.
I can't speak to Adobe's overall SVG strategy because I really don't know. But I do know that a subset of SVG is supported in Flex. As for Flex 2 pricing, the SDK is free, and single CPU deployments of Flex Data Services are free. Exact pricing on Flex Builder and clustered FDS haven't been announced. For more info on the Free Flex 2 SDK, see: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flexframework2/ [adobe.com]
Importing a subset of SVG graphics without supporting scripting or animation is a whole different story than deploying FLEX applications that run in an SVG player instead of the Flash player. The page you refered me to said that the FLEX tool (but not runtime) only supports importing SVG images, not running applications in the SVG viewer, nor scripting nor animation:
Flex supports a subset of the SVG 1.1 specification to let you import static, two-dimensional scalable vector graphics. This includes suppo
I really don't know what will happen to SVG. But in my opinion it has little value without being ubiquitous, and it is nearly impossible these days for new technologies to get that kind of adoption (like more than 90%), largely due to the chicken & egg problem. Flash is here to stay and is a great platform for building web based applications.
Adobe used to say that SGV was here to stay, so why did they let it wither on the vine and die? (My theory is because they bought Flash, so now they don't care about SVG any more.) Why should we trust what they say about Flash, if they lied about supporting SVG?
The Adobe SVG Page [adobe.com] they say that "Adobe has taken a leadership role in the development of the SVG specification and continues to ensure that its authoring tools are SVG compatible."
Is that still true? Will FLEX ever support more than importing a
Why do you say that Flex 2 applications run much faster? They're both running on the same Flash player. The main overhead is rendering graphics on the screen, followed by interpreting the SWF byte codes. Why should FLEX applications be any faster then OpenLaszlo applications? What do you mean by "the programming model is better"?
Totally incorrect. FLEX 1 creates Flash 7 apps, and thus is limited to what Flash 7 offers. FLEX 2 targets the upcoming Flash 9 player (currently in public beta).
The immediate goal of the swf9 porting project is to take advantage of the performance improvements in swf9 (AVM2). The swf9 vm is 10x faster for low-level stuff, with types another 2x or so. A secondary goal is to enable access to new features of AVM2, especially
But of course Flex locks you into Flash!
This is silly. This is like complaining about how Ajax frameworks lock you into XmlHTTPRequest (which BTW is not a standard and only exists because Microsoft added it to the browser).
And how did you make the conceptual leap from "more affordable pricing" to "*FREE*"?
Ummm, maybe because the Flex SDK that does everything Laszlo can do and more IS FREE [adobe.com].
It's not silly at all -- you're just not thinking out of "Flash -vs- AJAX" box.
The new version of OpenLaszlo IS an AJAX frameword that gives you independence from XMLHTTPRequest, because you can compile your OpenLaszlo programs for DHTML (using XMLHTTPRequest) or Flash (using a different Flash based mechanism to download and process XML). It provides a higher level (and more powerful, easier to use) abstraction than XMLHTTPRequest, instead of exposing the low level implementation details directly.
And how did you make the conceptual leap from "more affordable pricing" to "*FREE*"?
Because it's free. The compiler and the framework is free as in beer: for commercial and non-commercial projects, forever.
The IDE is sub $1000, but you can expect plenty of free IDE-s to pop-up that use the compiler, just like it happened with the free.NET compilers.
I won't even comment on the "it locks you" argument, but you probably realize that in your quest to put Flex in a bad light you've written few quite ridiculous
"*FREE*" does not mean "free (for non-commercial use only) (sub $1000) (plus an unannounced but high per-server licensing fee)". How much will Adobe charge for the server license? Have they told you, and are you under NDA? Please answer the price question, before claiming it's "*FREE*".
FLEX certainly does lock you into Flash. Why is this so hard for some people to understand? OpenLaszlo will support DHTML as well as other runtimes. OpenLaszlo's runtime-independence is quite an important point. Not every
"*FREE*" does not mean "free (for non-commercial use only) (sub $1000) (plus an unannounced but high per-server licensing fee)".
Dude, why don't you spend some time researching instead of ranting. Flex 2 doesn't need a server nor does its framework, it produces standalone SWF files you can deploy on a server of your desire.
The compiler/framework and the rest of the SDK is not "free non-commercial sub $1000" it's "free commercial or non-commercial $0", get it?
How much will Adobe charge for the server license?
Adobe has unbundled parts of FLEX (in reaction to OpenLaszlo), but it's still not all free, and parts of it are quite expensive, their prices not even announced. How can you claim something's free when Adobe hasn't even announce the price (but we all know it's greater than zero)? Microsoft's.NET Framework SDK is also "free", but not their web server and programming environment, and the source code isn't available.
All parts of OpenLaszlo, including complete source code for the compiler and server, is to
You're not even reading what I'm writing, just repeating points I've killed in my very first post. I just don't have the time to waste talking with what is a perfect example of a troll.
You haven't addressed ("killed") the point about FLEX locking you into Flash. Your first post just said it didn't, but that doesn't mean it does, because you couldn't support that point. If FLEX doesn't lock you into Flash, then what other runtimes does FLEX support than Flash? In what way is it indepent of Flash? That's a simple enough question to answer, isn't it?
Here is the definition of "Vendor lock-in [wikipedia.org]" from wikipedia:
In economics, vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in, lock-in, or the Pottersville pattern, is a situation in which a customer is so dependent on a vendor for products and services that he cannot move to another vendor without substantial switching costs, real and/or perceived.
These costs to the customer create a situation which favors the vendor at the expense of the consumer. Monopolies tend to result when lock-in costs create a
I think you are confusing vendor lock-in with how most web application programming languages work. Besides Laszlo, are there any other web application programming languages that run under multiple virtual machines? Seems like the beef you have with Flex about not running in multiple VM's could also apply to Java, Perl, PHP, etc. Do you also have the same problem with those technologies?
I think you're trying to handwave and redefine your way out of the cold hard fact that FLEX locks you into Flash. Flex is a proprietary knock-off of OpenLaszlo, that purposefully neglected to imitate the most important thing about OpenLaszlo, which is its platform independence. OpenLaszlo came before FLEX, and it was designed from day one to be platform independent. FLEX is never going to support alternate runtimes like DHTML, Avalon, SVG, or anything better that comes down the pike like 3D graphics runtim
This back-pedaling rationalization really makes me laugh:
The server component in this release was isolated and its functionality is very limited. It offers mostly connectivity useful for big enterprises and its functionality is duplicated by open source project like AMFPHP.
OK, so Macromedia has broken FLEX up into three parts: the SDK, which is "*FREE*" as you say, a developer tool, which is "under $1,000 per developer" as rumors have it, and the server component, which is "under $10,000 per server"
- The Flex SDK is free as in beer. - The Flex SDK ships with the framework source code. - The Flex SDK compiles applications to SWF format. - SWF files compiled with the Flex SDK can be hosted on any web server without restriction. - Applications built with the Flex SDK can connect to any HTTP Service (RESTful or other), SOAP Web Service, or any binary socket. - Official pricing for Flex Builder hasn't been announced. - Official pricing for Flex Data Services hasn't been announced; except that single CPU, non-clu
While you wait for a mirror... (Score:2)
Re:While you wait for a mirror... (Score:2)
Re:While you wait for a mirror... (Score:2)
Re:While you wait for a mirror... (Score:2)
Obnoxious Perpetuation of Flash as a web UI (Score:1)
Re:Obnoxious Perpetuation of Flash as a web UI (Score:1)
Re:Obnoxious Perpetuation of Flash as a web UI (Score:2)
I mean really, this outright hatred of Flash is ridiculous. In our case we are coding an application for use within Businesses. What this allows us to do is to not have to install any client on their pcs, not have to worry about getting updates to them, as we just update our servers with the latest version, and next time they load the app, it's brand new.
By rendering to flash you remove almost 100% of the issues of cross browser in
Re:Obnoxious Perpetuation of Flash as a web UI (Score:1)
However, our friend does point out a cosmic divide, between the traditional IT folks and their general disdain for anything "too webby." "Flash? FORGET THAT! I BLOCK IT!" And no wonder, he thinks its only used for cute calendar pop-ups. B
Re:While you wait for a mirror... (Score:5, Informative)
There's a major and important difference between Flex and OpenLaszlo: Flex is designed to lock you into Flash, and OpenLaszlo is designed to free you from Flash and enable you to deploy your application on other runtimes like DHTML. Also, OpenLaszlo is true Open Source Software, and FLEX is not. FLEX has some strict licensing restrictions about how you can use it, how you can modify it, and what you can the source code.
Why do you say that Flex 2 applications run much faster? They're both running on the same Flash player. The main overhead is rendering graphics on the screen, followed by interpreting the SWF byte codes. Why should FLEX applications be any faster then OpenLaszlo applications? What do you mean by "the programming model is better"?
Are there any application as complex as Laszlo Mail [laszlomail.com] implemented FLEX? Can you point us to any FLEX applications of similar complexity that we can test drive, and compare the speed for ourselves?
-Don
Re:While you wait for a mirror... (Score:2)
Can I get commit access to their svn repo? Who owns the code I contribute to OpenLaszlo?
Why do you say that Flex 2 applications run much faster? They're both running on the same Flash player.
Actually Flex 2 applications utilize the new VM in Flash 9 which in a number of benchmarks shows performance improvements of 10x to 100x.
What do you mean by "the programming model is better"?
There is a lot to cover here and I'm off to see a movie in a f
Re:While you wait for a mirror... (Score:1)
> Can I get commit access to their svn repo?
Sure. Just like any open source project, you earn your stripes and you get commit access. And like other big open source projects, OpenLaszlo has a review process for all commits.
Are you implying that I could get commit access to the Flex codebase? Or that Flex is open source? What are you implying?
>> What do you mean by "the programming model is better"?
> There is a
Re:While you wait for a mirror... (Score:2)
Your contributor faq [openlaszlo.org] doesn't indicate commit access, only that patches must be submitted via email. Not quite "true open source".
Are you implying that I could get commit access to the Flex codebase? Or that Flex is open source? What are you implying?
I am not trying to imply that Flex is more "open" than Laszlo, rather that Laszl
Re:While you wait for a mirror... (Score:1)
Just like that big phony "the linux kernel"!
The fact is that not having direct committer access is (a) about to be fixed, and (b) an infrastructure detail that doesn't detract from the fact that we have healthy participation from the community -- our new 3.3 release contains many community-contributed bug fixes and new features.
Also, we in fact have direct committer
Re:While you wait for a mirror... (Score:2)
As long as people on the FLEX team are fact-checking, could you people please correct the mis-impression that FLEX is "*FREE*"? Surely Adobe doesn't want to encourage software piracy of their products. Unbundling the SDK and giving that away under certain conditions, doesn't make the whole system free, like the entire OpenLaszlo system really and totally is. I can download and install the Microsoft .NET Framework SDK for free too, but that doesn't mean I can pirate the entire source code of the Microsoft w
Re:While you wait for a mirror... (Score:2)
Since you work on the FLEX team, could you please tell us if Adobe will continue to support SVG, and if FLEX will support SVG as an alternative runtime? And how much the developer tool and server will cost? Stuff like that...
Disclaimer: I worked on Laszlo Mail [laszlomail.com] as a contractor for Laszlo Systems. I've also developed several SVG projects, so I'm interested to know if Adobe's still supporting it. Does Adobe's SVG plug-in still hard-crash Mozilla/Firefox? That's why I gave up on SVG.
-Don
Re:While you wait for a mirror... (Score:2)
For more info on the Free Flex 2 SDK, see: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flexframework2/ [adobe.com]
Also for more info on Flex's SVG support see:
http://livedocs.macromedia.com/labs/1/flex20beta2/ wwhelp/wwhimpl/co [macromedia.com]
Re:While you wait for a mirror... (Score:2)
Importing a subset of SVG graphics without supporting scripting or animation is a whole different story than deploying FLEX applications that run in an SVG player instead of the Flash player. The page you refered me to said that the FLEX tool (but not runtime) only supports importing SVG images, not running applications in the SVG viewer, nor scripting nor animation:
Re:While you wait for a mirror... (Score:2)
What are Adobe's SVG plans? (Score:2)
Adobe used to say that SGV was here to stay, so why did they let it wither on the vine and die? (My theory is because they bought Flash, so now they don't care about SVG any more.) Why should we trust what they say about Flash, if they lied about supporting SVG?
The Adobe SVG Page [adobe.com] they say that "Adobe has taken a leadership role in the development of the SVG specification and continues to ensure that its authoring tools are SVG compatible." Is that still true? Will FLEX ever support more than importing a
Re:While you wait for a mirror... (Score:2)
Totally incorrect. FLEX 1 creates Flash 7 apps, and thus is limited to what Flash 7 offers. FLEX 2 targets the upcoming Flash 9 player (currently in public beta).
The features Flash
Re:While you wait for a mirror... (Score:2)
The OpenLaszlo compiler is being rewritten to support the more efficient Flash 9 runtime, as well as other runtimes like DHTML/AJAX:
http://wiki.openlaszlo.org/Legals_Project [openlaszlo.org]
http://wiki.openlaszlo.org/Legals_Project_Plan [openlaszlo.org]
Re:While you wait for a mirror... (Score:2)
This is silly. This is like complaining about how Ajax frameworks lock you into XmlHTTPRequest (which BTW is not a standard and only exists because Microsoft added it to the browser).
And how did you make the conceptual leap from "more affordable pricing" to "*FREE*"?
Ummm, maybe because the Flex SDK that does everything Laszlo can do and more IS FREE [adobe.com].
Re:While you wait for a mirror... (Score:2)
It's not silly at all -- you're just not thinking out of "Flash -vs- AJAX" box. The new version of OpenLaszlo IS an AJAX frameword that gives you independence from XMLHTTPRequest, because you can compile your OpenLaszlo programs for DHTML (using XMLHTTPRequest) or Flash (using a different Flash based mechanism to download and process XML). It provides a higher level (and more powerful, easier to use) abstraction than XMLHTTPRequest, instead of exposing the low level implementation details directly.
OpenL
Re:While you wait for a mirror... (Score:2)
Because it's free. The compiler and the framework is free as in beer: for commercial and non-commercial projects, forever.
The IDE is sub $1000, but you can expect plenty of free IDE-s to pop-up that use the compiler, just like it happened with the free
I won't even comment on the "it locks you" argument, but you probably realize that in your quest to put Flex in a bad light you've written few quite ridiculous
Re:While you wait for a mirror... (Score:2)
"*FREE*" does not mean "free (for non-commercial use only) (sub $1000) (plus an unannounced but high per-server licensing fee)". How much will Adobe charge for the server license? Have they told you, and are you under NDA? Please answer the price question, before claiming it's "*FREE*".
FLEX certainly does lock you into Flash. Why is this so hard for some people to understand? OpenLaszlo will support DHTML as well as other runtimes. OpenLaszlo's runtime-independence is quite an important point. Not every
Re:While you wait for a mirror... (Score:2)
Dude, why don't you spend some time researching instead of ranting. Flex 2 doesn't need a server nor does its framework, it produces standalone SWF files you can deploy on a server of your desire.
The compiler/framework and the rest of the SDK is not "free non-commercial sub $1000" it's "free commercial or non-commercial $0", get it?
How much will Adobe charge for the server license?
Re:While you wait for a mirror... (Score:2)
Adobe has unbundled parts of FLEX (in reaction to OpenLaszlo), but it's still not all free, and parts of it are quite expensive, their prices not even announced. How can you claim something's free when Adobe hasn't even announce the price (but we all know it's greater than zero)? Microsoft's .NET Framework SDK is also "free", but not their web server and programming environment, and the source code isn't available.
All parts of OpenLaszlo, including complete source code for the compiler and server, is to
Re:While you wait for a mirror... (Score:2)
Re:While you wait for a mirror... (Score:2)
You haven't addressed ("killed") the point about FLEX locking you into Flash. Your first post just said it didn't, but that doesn't mean it does, because you couldn't support that point. If FLEX doesn't lock you into Flash, then what other runtimes does FLEX support than Flash? In what way is it indepent of Flash? That's a simple enough question to answer, isn't it?
-Don
FLEX is a textbook case of Vendor Lock-In (Score:2)
Here is the definition of "Vendor lock-in [wikipedia.org]" from wikipedia:
Re:FLEX is a textbook case of Vendor Lock-In (Score:2)
Re:FLEX is a textbook case of Vendor Lock-In (Score:2)
I think you're trying to handwave and redefine your way out of the cold hard fact that FLEX locks you into Flash. Flex is a proprietary knock-off of OpenLaszlo, that purposefully neglected to imitate the most important thing about OpenLaszlo, which is its platform independence. OpenLaszlo came before FLEX, and it was designed from day one to be platform independent. FLEX is never going to support alternate runtimes like DHTML, Avalon, SVG, or anything better that comes down the pike like 3D graphics runtim
Re:While you wait for a mirror... (Score:2)
This back-pedaling rationalization really makes me laugh:
OK, so Macromedia has broken FLEX up into three parts: the SDK, which is "*FREE*" as you say, a developer tool, which is "under $1,000 per developer" as rumors have it, and the server component, which is "under $10,000 per server"
Re:While you wait for a mirror... (Score:2)
- The Flex SDK ships with the framework source code.
- The Flex SDK compiles applications to SWF format.
- SWF files compiled with the Flex SDK can be hosted on any web server without restriction.
- Applications built with the Flex SDK can connect to any HTTP Service (RESTful or other), SOAP Web Service, or any binary socket.
- Official pricing for Flex Builder hasn't been announced.
- Official pricing for Flex Data Services hasn't been announced; except that single CPU, non-clu
Re:While you wait for a mirror... (Score:1)