In a post on the Open Laszlo forums, rcyeager of cooqy described his experience trying his Open Laszlo applications in the latest preview release, PR4:

The demos in the PR4 Explorer work...but my "real-world" code fails miserably. I expected DHTML conversion issues, but to lose support of SWF mode compatibility is scary...and this is with Legals supposedly going to Beta soon? In my case, 100% of my V3 apps don't work in either SWF mode or DHTML w/ Legals PR4. Is anyone getting better results with their real-world V3 apps running in Legals?? So far the attempt by Legals to pull the tablecloth out from under the dishes has left my lobster dinner strewn all across the floor...

Jim Grandy's post about Legals Preview Release 3 sets the stage. My perspective on porting existing applications to the multiple runtimes infrastructure is based on converting the calendar demo. A few highlights:

• swf assets won't work in DHTML. To display a swf asset, you'd need the flash player; we're not using the flash player in DHTML, so, swf assets just won't appear. The solution here is to use bitmap assets instead of swf's.
• We haven't made all the components work yet in PR4. We've got open bugs in JIRA for all the component problems.
• drawview support was just added in the last few days; it's not in PR4. Look for it in beta 1, at least for firefox. (IE support is still in progress, I think.)
• DHTML doesn't support embedding fonts; swf does. If you try to embed a font, you'll get a compile warning, and the text will look ugly, or it won't appear at all.
• The flash runtime is permissive about derefrencing a null reference and getting properties on an undefined object. DHTML blows up if you do this.Because it was permitted in swf, lots of code doesn't check for null. All the places that don't check for null need to be tracked down and fixed, both in the LFC, the components, and application code. This was the source of at least half of the problems I had.

The overall story is that we're still getting up to feature-complete, and we know we've got a lot of optimization and bug fixing ahead of us. We really appreciate all our users, especially when they take the time to post their concerns and problems. Keep the bug reports coming, and we'll keep working.

This is huge! Walmart.com has chosen OpenLaszlo as the core technology for its new web site features. Check out the site at: Walmart.com.

See:

• Walmart.com Relaunches With Open Source Features
• Walmart.com Respins with Open Source (OpenLaszlo)

I wanted to make sure everyone had seen two pieces of OpenLaszlo news that broke this week. Together the two create a very strong validation of our multi-runtime strategy.

First, we reached our fourth Legals snapshot, including dramatic improvements in application and component functionality under DHTML. We have now brought over multiple OpenLaszlo applications from 3.x to Legals, with very few code changes in all cases. (There are still some significant caveats, which is why this is not a beta release: several of the components -- combobox, datagrid, menu, floatinglist -- do not yet work, and IE6 support continues to lag behind support for FireFox 1.5.)

Calendar is here. We brought this demo over from 3.3.3 by changing 20 out of a total of 3700 lines of code. (Note that this version of the demo does not work in IE6, but the latest Legals nightly build has fixes to many of these problems -- here.)

Components Sampler is here. The combobox and datagrid examples are not functional in this example, but you'll notice that every other component is fully functioning. Note that these are completely custom widgets -- the only stock HTML widget in use here is for text entry.

The news posting for PR4 is here.

Second, Sun Microsystems and Laszlo Systems announced a collaboration to develop a Java Micro Edition runtime for OpenLaszlo Legals. We're very excited about the potential of this project, code named Orbit, and thrilled to be working with Sun. The idea of OpenLaszlo applications running on literally billions of embedded and mobile devices is amazing, and we're looking forward to a dramatic expansion of the potential of the framework.

The news release for Orbit is here.

- Collaboration Brings Laszlo Systems’ Rich Internet Development Platform to Java Technology-enabled Devices -

SANTA CLARA and SAN MATEO, Calif. (October 10, 2006) – Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW), the creator and leading advocate of Java™ technology, and Laszlo Systems, Inc., the original developer of OpenLaszlo, a leading open source rich Internet development platform, today announced a collaboration to enable OpenLaszlo applications to run on devices supporting the Java™ Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) application. With this move, Sun and Laszlo are actively contributing resources to a new project for the OpenLaszlo community, code-named Orbit.

With more than 3.8 billion Java devices including 1.2 billion Java technology-powered phones in the world today, Sun has one of the most widely distributed client runtime environments. OpenLaszlo is a widely adopted open source application development platform that uses Ajax-style programming techniques, integrating XML and JavaScript™, to create rich and robust online experiences. With this endeavor, Sun and Laszlo will work together to bridge OpenLaszlo’s expressive markup language, LZX, with the ubiquity and power of the Java ME platform.

OpenLaszlo, currently in version 3.3, was designed from its inception to support the instantaneous, no-download deployment of web applications on a diverse set of client runtime environments. Now with further extension to support the Java ME platform, OpenLaszlo will offer an unprecedented level of development portability and flexibility across a wide variety of Java technology-based phones, television set-top boxes, and other connected devices. Support for OpenLaszlo applications further enhances one of the key strengths of the Java platform – the ability to support development environments and authoring tools targeting a broad spectrum of developer skills and preferences.

"The integration of OpenLaszlo and Java ME technology is another important step in the evolution of mobile computing," said Robert Brewin, CTO of Sun Microsystems' software group. "This collaboration will bring the richness of the modern web, the power of Java technology and the unique capabilities of OpenLaszlo together for the benefit of our respective developer communities."

"We’re pleased to be working with Sun, which is a big step forward in furthering our collective vision of enabling seamless application support for all connected devices," said David Temkin, founder and CTO of Laszlo Systems. "With both companies' strong commitment to open source and open standards, today’s announcement marks a significant milestone towards those efforts."

Sun and Laszlo expect to release the first demonstrable Project Orbit application running under the Java ME platform later this year at www.openlaszlo.org. For more information on Project Orbit and its goals, please visit www.java.net or www.openlaszlo.org/orbit. To become a contributor to the Project, registration is available at www.openlaszlo.org/orbit.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

A singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer" -- guides Sun in the development of technologies that power the world's most important markets. Sun's philosophy of sharing innovation and building communities is at the forefront of the next wave of computing: the Participation Age. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at http://sun.com.

About Laszlo Systems

Laszlo Systems is the original developer of OpenLaszlo, the leading open source platform for building and deploying Web 2.0 applications. OpenLaszlo technology has been widely adopted by application and service providers in the consumer, enterprise, education and government markets. Laszlo Systems provides updates, training and support for OpenLaszlo and offers rich-experience web-based digital life applications such as Laszlo Mail, built on OpenLaszlo.

For more information about San Mateo, Calif.-based Laszlo Systems, visit www.laszlosystems.com.

GlassFish is a "Java EE 5 compatible enterprise-quality Application Server". It's an open source project championed by Sun, we've heard great things about it, and it is compatible with OpenLaszlo!

Check out the details on the Glassfish wiki or in Harpreet Singh's blog.

We are excited to announce availability of the fourth snapshot of OpenLaszlo project "Legals". This snapshot showcases a breakthrough in our effort to bring OpenLaszlo to DHTML: we have many of the original OpenLaszlo Components running in DHTML, enough so that it is now feasible to quickly port existing applications from 3.3.x to Legals.

The PR4 snapshot is available from our Downloads page, or directly from Subversion.

To demonstrate what is possible with this snapshot, we have made available DHTML versions of two longstanding OpenLaszlo applications, Calendar and the Components Sampler. These two, and of course LZPIX, are available in Flash and DHTML from the Demos page. As a testament to how well this is going, the port of Calendar from OpenLaszlo 3.3.3 to Legals required changes to less than one percent of the application code.

Once again, please take a close look at Legals; if you are interested in helping to guide the evolution of the web there is no better place to get involved.