OpenLaszlo 4.0.7 is a bug fix release with one new feature, improved bug report support in the debugger. For a detailed list of the bugs fixed and information on this new feature, see the Release Notes. OpenLaszlo 4.0.7 is the recommended release for swf development. You can download it here.

OpenLaszlo 4.0.7 fixes the following bugs:

LPP-1636 - Scripts do not handle spaces in path names
LPP-2593 - Trunk: lzc and lzc.bat will not run in a standard Windows configuration
LPP-4099 - Can't get onerror event while loading resources from 403 forbidden image links
LPP-4142 - LZC arguments that use an equal sign (such as --runtime=swf8) do not work on the Windows command line (cmd).
LPP-4664 - test/explicit-replicators/replicator.lzx visually deletes last two items when the second-to-last item is clicked and ...
LPP-4719 - Provide a way to output relevant debug info to copy/paste into mail
LPP-4737 - Empty graphic seen when you navigate to the OL app without Flash
LPP-4784 - OL4.0.5, tag and SWF : http://www.openlaszlo.org/lps4/lps/components/extensions/test/html-swf.jsp NOT WORKING
LPP-4843 - Error parsing arguments to lzc using native Windows
LPP-4844 - ondata event not triggered when dataset loads v4.0.5 SWF
LPP-4884 - All small applications, except weather, will fail to display in IE7/swf.
LPP-4906 - Laszlo Explorer, incorrect text
LPP-4999 - IE resets history to #0 after visiting another site and pressing the back button
LPP-5004 - Generate Release Notes for 4.0.7
LPP-5012 - Multiple calls to callJS fails in Firefox
LPP-5016 - _parse gets called before canvas is initialized
LPP-5070 - Videos not playing in YouTube demo

OpenLaszlo 4.0.7 has the following improvement:
The bugReport method of the Debugger can be used to create a report suitable for copy/pasting into a bug report. To use it, enable backtraces and debugging, then inspect the error message that you believe reveals a bug, then invoke Debug.bugReport() in the debugger. Copy and paste the output of that call into your bug report. This process is described in more detail in the Debugging chapter of the OpenLaszlo Developer's Guide.

Support for DHTML applications remains at "beta" level; it will be fully supported with OL 4.1. Until then, you can find the most recent DHTML bug fixes and support in the trunk branch (4.x nightly builds).

Matt Asay of Alfresco announced in his CNet blog that the Thalia application framework built as an open source software by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Information Services & Technology won an InfoWorld award. Here's a description of Thalia from the InfoWorld website:

MIT's Information Services and Technology group developed Thalia, an application framework for the management of image and other digital media. To ensure the product's success, MIT partnered with Questcon Technologies, a QA and test specialty firm, to validate the application before releasing to MIT's departments. Thalia comprises a rich Web client and the Image Management Engine, which provides a framework of distinct, reusable components via its REST-style APIs. Thalia's Web client was built using OpenLaszlo and is compiled to create a Flash interface. Thalia's back end comprises Java servlets exposed as REST Web services, and it interfaces with the Alfresco open source ECM (enterprise content management) system. The framework allows MIT departments to upload, organize, tag, present, discuss, and search multimedia content.

OpenLaszlo can perfectly be used to improve the presentation layer of web applications, connecting to many of the existing open source CMS, webapplication development frameworks and digital content repositories. As long as the back-end system provides web services to connect to the integration of an OpenLaszlo rich Internet application client with the back-end doesn't pose any problems, providing a superb user experience across runtimes like DHTML/Ajax and Flash.

Congratulations to the whole Thalia team! It's always inspiring to see what you are building with our technology.

This week will feature two OpenLaszlo community events in Europe: the initial meeting of the OpenLaszlo User Group in Zurich, Switzerland - and the European OpenLaszlo Community Meeting in Amsterdam. We'll meet in Zurich on Tuesday, Nov 13 at the Catsoft.ch office space (thanks to Arthur Heftli and Catsoft for coming up with the idea for a meeting). If you plan to attend the meeting please enter your name into the list on the meeting page in the OpenLaszlo Europe Google Group.

I've received a lot of support from Marc de Koos of XB in organizing the European OpenLaszlo Community Meeting in Amsterdam, Nov 16-18. Thank you Marc for your help and XB's generosity. XB is the first official Laszlo Partner in Europe, so I'm very excited to see that they are so supportive when it comes to the OpenLaszlo community.

We are still looking for community members interested in joining us in Amsterdam, so if you want to meet with the leading OpenLaszlo developers in Europe put your name on the list. There will be socializing, a whole day with presentations around OpenLaszlo, OpenLaszlo adoption in Europe and community discussions around the OpenLaszlo technology. On Sunday you'll have the chance to participate in coding sessions, so it's a good idea to bring your notebooks with you. XB offered their office space for Saturday and Sunday, so we'll have a conference room, wifi and enough seats for everyone participating in the coding sessions on Sunday.

If you have any questions around the European OpenLaszlo Community Meeting, please post them in the Google Group. And don't miss the socializing and schmoozing on Friday evening, 7pm at De Kroon restaurant.

Thanks to Jim Grandy and http://www.cuppadev.co.uk/2007/10/31/rotating-openlaszlo-with-webkit/ for pointing out that webkit, aka Safari now supports rotation via CSS:
http://webkit.org/blog/130/css-transforms/

If you pull down a copy of trunk after build r7107, you can use setRotation() in DHTML as well as Flash. You must be running a recent webkit build.

Now, if only Firefox and IE would add support, we'd have one less Flash-only feature