OpenLaszlo – open source flash

Just took an online workshop for OpenLaszlo with Antun Karlovac and very much enjoyed the gentle yet rich introduction.

The sign-up stuff said that they expected participants to have downloaded and played with openlaszlo already. I think maybe I did that a bunch of months ago, but even so I didn’t get lost in the workshop. Others with obviously more experience got their questions answered too. The pace was relaxed, yet there was plenty of content, which is really refreshing – so many workshops online or off are so rushed because the presenter tries to pack way too much in. Not so with Antun, who went through the points systematically and left plenty of time to answer questions in a very friendly way.

Openlaszlo itself looks quite intriguing. You write in openlaszlo’s xml grammar called lzx, and then you can compile to either the swf or dhtml runtime. The syntax looks straight forward, not intimidating at all. It will take doing the actual tutorials to find out really what it’s like to write apps with openlaszlo, but after the workshop it will only be a question of making the time to do it – the motivation is definitely there.

If you’re near either San Mateo CA or NY I’d highly recommend doing one of their workshops.

A couple links from the workshop so I don’t lose them deep in some notes somewhere:

learn openlaszlo
http://www.laszlosystems.com/developers/learn/

sample app used in workshop
http://www.laszlosystems.com/lps-3.0/showcase/registration/main.lzx?lzt=html

amazon sample app
http://www.laszlosystems.com/lps/sample-apps/amazon/amazon2.lzx?lzt=html

ide (still beta, still some bugs)
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/ide4laszlo

syntax highlighting with eclipse – for code editing only
http://www.laszlosystems.com/developers/learn/articles/Eclipse_LZX_IDE.php

sample
http://www.laszlosystems.com/lps/sample-apps/amazon/amazon2.lzx

sample of laszlo swf embedded in html
http://www.laszlosystems.com/demos/weather/

docs online:
http://www.laszlosystems.com/lps-3.2/docs/