01.30.07

Announcing the new <html/> tag for DHTML

Posted on January 30th, 2007 in General, Development by Max

I’m pleased to announce the introduction of the snappy new <html/> tag for DHTML. Essentially, it allows an HTML page to be embedded inside any OpenLaszlo component. Here’s a simple demo browser:

http://labs.openlaszlo.org/legals-nightly/lps/components/extensions/test/html.lzx?lzr=dhtml&lzt=html

Here’s the source for the app:

<canvas width=”100%” height=”100%”>
<include href=”extensions/html.lzx”/>

<class name=”browser” extends=”window” resizable=”true” bgcolor=”silver”>
<edittext name=”txt” text=”http://openlaszlo.org/” width=”300″/>
<button x=”310″ onclick=”parent.htmlview.setSrc(parent.txt.getText()); parent.htmlview.setAttribute(’visible’, true)”>Load</button>
<html name=”htmlview” width=”${parent.width - 19}” height=”${parent.height - 74}” x=”${parent.x + 7}” y=”${parent.y + 53}”/>
</class>

<browser width=”100%” height=”100%” x=”10″ y=”10″/>
</canvas>

As you can see, the HTML tag can be constrained to automatically resize to any view, in this case a window. The html tag’s src attribute can also be set, or the setSrc() method can be called from LZX to reload the contents of the tag. It’s a powerful feature, and we’re looking forward to seeing all the exciting things you make with it!

01.29.07

Legals’ new Javascript bridge

Posted on January 29th, 2007 in General, Development by Max

I’ve been meaning to write an entry about this cool new feature, and then Alexander beat me to it! Here’s a link to his entry:

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/saintx/eremite/2007/01/javascript_to_laszlo_via_exter.html

I promise to write a detailed followup soon! Note that Alexander’s example uses externalInterface directly. With the new system, this is no longer required.

01.22.07

Rich Chumby Application?

Posted on January 22nd, 2007 in General by jgrandy

We received a Chumby at the office late last week. This caused quite a bit of stir: delight, astonishment, even some bafflement (quickly overcome). If you don’t know, a Chumby is a clock radio sized computer with a touch screen and a soft, fabric-clad, bean bag-filled body. It’s got integrated wifi and runs Flash Lite 2 (FL2) on top of Linux.

We received the Chumby — they are not yet on the market — because we told the good folks there that we would see what we could do about getting OpenLaszlo to run on the device. FL2 is compatible with Flash 7 content, which makes it theoretically compatible with OpenLaszlo 3.x and later. We experimented previously with running OpenLaszlo apps in FL2, with some success, so it will be fun to see if we can make more progress with this device.

Thanks to Chumby Industries for the opportunity, and we’re looking forward to producing the first “Rich Chumby Application”!

01.16.07

Under-the-hood improvements

Posted on January 16th, 2007 in General, Development by benshine

If the Open Laszlo team seem quiet since shipping OL4 Beta 1, it’s because we’ve got our heads together way under the hood of the language, runtime and tools. Henry Minsky has been working on RPC and (hooray!) the grid component. Frisco has been paving the way for CSS development in Legals by porting the CSS test suite to lzunit. Jim Grandy, our fearless leader, is continuing his work on the documentation tools, and bringing Phill Apley into the reference guide tools effort. Tucker is fixing event and initialization order, which corrects a lot of component issues. Max Carlson is going sicko crazy on a new tag that will delight and amaze you. The Doc Guy ™ is hard at work on the information architecture of the whole Open Laszlo site, with an exciting new project in the planning stages. And the rest of us — including the community! — continue to work on filing reproducible bugs, improving build processes, and evangelizing Open Laszlo in our free time. I don’t have a firm date for our next two releases (OL4 Beta 2 and OL4 Final), but I can say, they will represent some of the best architectural work I’ve ever seen.

01.05.07

OpenLaszlo 4.0 B1

Posted on January 5th, 2007 in Announcements, Releases by jgrandy

With a sigh of relief, and a few virtual pats on the back, we released the official build of OpenLaszlo 4.0 B1 today. The downloads are available here, the release notes are here, and you can play with the live bits here.

We’re pretty used to the idea by now, but even so it is still an amazing thing to see the full Laszlo-rific experience running natively in an HTML browser. Those of you new to OpenLaszlo 4.0 aka Legals should really take a look at Laszlo Explorer in a modern browser such as Firefox 2.0. Go through the Laszlo in 10 Minutes tutorial. Play with the Calendar. RIA? Ajax? Whatever you want to call it, it’s pretty darn cool.

As for us: now back to work! Lots to be done for Beta 2, and even more before we call a final build. We’ve got a few ideas for how OL4 might be used, but I’m sure you’ll surprise everyone with something completely unexpected. We can’t wait to see what you’ll do with it!

01.01.07

Check out the Open Laszlo forums for community discussions

Posted on January 1st, 2007 in General by benshine

The Open Laszlo forums are a valuable resource for learning Open Laszlo. Intrepid developers there are already experimenting with the 4.0 beta1 release candidate, and quite a few lzx experts are active on the forums, answering questions and working through problems. Especially tune in to the LZX Coding Help forum and the brand new Multiple Runtimes (aka Legals) forum.