Archive for the ‘Releases’ Category

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OpenLaszlo 4.0.2 Released

Thursday, May 17th, 2007

OpenLaszlo 4.0.2 was released to the web today. This is a minor release resolving almost 50 issues reported against OpenLaszlo 4.0.0, and adding a few new features.

Many of the issues addressed in this release were reported by the OpenLaszlo community. Thanks to everyone who took the time to try out OL4 in SWF or DHTML and report your experiences to the mailing list or forum, and a particularly warm thanks to those of you who filed bugs!

As for features, this release contains support for the <html> tag in SWF, so you can embed raw html content inside your OpenLaszlo app from either support runtime. 4.0.2 also includes preliminary support for the SOAP protocol in DHTML.

Full details are available in the Release Notes.

Note that although recommending OL4 for production deployment is our highest priority, we are not yet there with this release. (See here for more.) Your participation, by reporting your OL4 porting experiences, by filing bug reports, and by directly contributing to the platform, will enormously speed up the process.

You may wonder what happened to 4.0.1. Funny story: just as we were putting 4.0.1 to bed, we found a bad regression in the html wrapper code that was causing high CPU load when running the Amazon demo in DHTML. It turned out to be simpler and safer to quietly release 4.0.1 and turn around a 4.0.2 release in 48 hours than to retract 4.0.1 and rebuild it.

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OpenLaszlo 4.0 Announced!

Tuesday, March 20th, 2007

We are extremely pleased and proud to announce that OpenLaszlo 4.0 is now available. This is the first official release of the new multi-runtime edition of OpenLaszlo, complete with a native browser DHTML ("ajax") runtime, a heavily revamped Flash (7, 8, 9) runtime, and much more. With OpenLaszlo 4.0, you can compile source LZX applications for any supported target with a single mouse click.

OpenLaszlo 4.0 is available from http://www.openlaszlo.org/download
This release of OpenLaszlo is built on a new kernel architecture that abstracts away platform differences. Also, with OL4, we have switched to an inheritance-based class system that tracks the emerging ECMAScript 4 standard. These new language features have been implemented in the LFC core to support (and extend) JavaScript 2 `class` declarations portably. This means that the OpenLaszlo platform is well engineered to keep up with emerging JavaScript standards and to support new target runtimes.

In addition to literally hundreds of improvements to all aspects of the platform software and documentation, we have added new features, such as support for streaming media. The documentation tools have been re-implemented in order to to make them easier to maintain and also to give us more possibilities for arranging and accessing the data in the Reference Manual. Eventually, this will allow us to provide better cross-referencing, better indexing, more user control over presentation of information, and more options for printing and displaying the documentation.

We have put a lot of effort into improving our open source processes. The tools we use to build, test, and analyze OpenLaszlo have matured significantly with OL4. We have changed to using Subversion, for source control, in order to enable a more open development process. The build is now based on ant 1.6.5, rather than ant 1.5. We have created a new testing tool, lztest, for automated testing, to complement lzunit, our tool for application- and component-level testing. We have created a suite of benchmarks and benchmark analysis tools.

By any criterion, this is the most ambitious and significant release in the history of OpenLaszlo.

The OpenLaszlo project aspires to be truly open and inclusive. Raju Bitter, our OpenLaszlo community manager, is on board to answer questions, streamline processes, and generally make it easier for you to play a vital part in this platform's success.

Post questions and comments to laszlo-user@openlaszlo.org or to the OpenLaszlo Forum. Please report bugs, especially regressions from OpenLaszlo 3.x, to our bug database.

OpenLaszlo 4.0 is the culmination of a project that began more than a year ago, and it embodies the contributions of dozens of community members from around the world. Thank you, and congratulations to all!

Posted in Announcements, General, Releases | 12 Comments »

OpenLaszlo 4.0 B1

Friday, January 5th, 2007

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!

Posted in Announcements, Releases | 2 Comments »

Legals PR3: Replacing the tablecloth without touching the place settings

Friday, September 1st, 2006

It's kind of a hackneyed image: the magician yanks the tablecloth out from under the place settings for an elegant meal, leaving the wine glasses and candlesticks in their places, unperturbed. A neat trick, but even better would be to replace the tablecloth with a new one, all without touching the candelabra or the crystal goblets.

I'm not usually given to hyperbole, but with our latest Legals snapshot, PR3, we are nearing the end of a process that feels a lot like replacing the tablecloth: LZPIX still runs, has continued to run, against an OpenLaszlo source base that has seen extensive renovation, refactoring, and rehabilitation. Over the last couple of milestones, we have:

  • Merged the custom DHTML runtime used in our earlier prototypes into the original runtime, and refactored it all to yield two clean kernels (SWF7-8 and DHTML) and a target-agnostic OpenLaszlo Runtime;
  • Built out the two kernels to be nearly feature-complete and to match the draft Kernel API proposal;
  • Added compiler support for several draft elements of the in-process ECMAScript Release 4 specification;
  • Converted all of the OpenLaszlo Runtime to use the proposed ECMA-4 class declaration syntax, and in the process modified them all to directly work with the new OpenLaszlo class model;
  • Resolved a large number of compiler warnings that would turn into fatal errors in DHTML;
  • Made great strides designing a flexible mechanism for selecting vector or raster graphics assets based on runtime;
  • Fixed a large number of difficult browser-specific bugs, including leaks, performance issues, and media/data loader quirks; and
  • Further demonstrated the capabilities of the Kernel API by prototyping an SVG kernel in just a few days.

It turns out the tablecloth trick requires low friction and high inertia. The tablecloth slides more easily from under heavier objects with smaller contact area. Software doesn't have inertia or friction per se, but perhaps metaphorically we can think of test methodology as the equivalent: stable change is easier when you are able to quickly detect adverse consequences of a proposed modification. Consequently we've been steadily investing in unit testing infrastructure and unit test coverage, without which we may not have been able to refactor the runtime so quickly. As well, the Laszlo QA folks working on OpenLaszlo have done a wonderful job keeping our standards up with respect to LZPIX performance and functionality. There have been a few regressions, and we need better performance metrics, but having a solid test plan for LZPIX has really helped us maintain high standards.

All in all, we're solidly on the road to our upcoming Beta release. Toward that end, the next challenge is to bring up the OpenLaszlo widget toolkit in DHTML, a process that will certainly shake out a substantial number of remaining issues. Stay tuned!

Posted in Development, General, Releases | 2 Comments »

Released: OpenLaszlo Legals PR1

Friday, June 23rd, 2006

We are excited to announce that the snapshot release of the OpenLaszlo Legals project is available! The snapshot represents the current state of the Legals project, the goal of which is to make OpenLaszlo a true multi-runtime environment by supporting DHTML, in addition to SWF. See the OpenLaszlo Legals page for more information.

With this snapshot, you can:

  • Compile and run the LZPIX demo application for both SWF and DHTML with FireFox 1.5 or higher
  • Download binary builds of the Legals software for all supported platforms (Linux/Unix, MacOS X, Windows XP)
  • Access the source code using Subversion, such that you can build and use Legals for simple apps

You will find that most existing OpenLaszlo applications targeted for SWF and built in Legals will function reasonably well. As expected in a preview, there are some new bugs resulting from the significant architecture changes underway to support DHTML. You will also find that there is already a significant amount of functionality for DHTML that is supported. See the Release Notes, available from the OpenLaszlo Download page for specific information. Please keep in mind that the APIs used in Legals will change. We do not guarantee compatibility between this snapshot and the final Legals release.

This is your chance to see what is going on in the project and to get involved! We encourage you to try out this snapshot and report bugs that you find using JIRA. Specific details, as to whether something works in DHTML -vs- SWF is very helpful.

Join the community by getting involved in fixing problems, or supporting functionality in DHTML. See Become a Contributor for information on getting involved.

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Released: OpenLaszlo 3.3.1

Wednesday, June 7th, 2006

OpenLazlo 3.3.1 is available now. Download it here.

OpenLaszlo 3.3.1 addresses one issue. There was a single regression, which is that the behavior of simplelayout was inadvertantly broken in OpenLaszlo 3.3. In this release, the behavior of simplelayout has been corrected such that it applies only to a single axis.

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Released: IDEforLaszlo 0.2.0

Monday, April 10th, 2006

We are pleased to announce that a new version of IDEforLaszlo is available. See http://www.openlaszlo.org/oldownload. This version, 0.2.0, supports OpenLaszlo 3.2 and has compiler performance improvements (of up to 3x) on subsequent compiles. In addition, the build process has been significantly streamlined and more bugs have been fixed thanks in part to the contributions of Andy Chandler, Phil Berkland, and Max Carlson. We are also appreciative of the testing and verification performed by Frisco Del Rosario.

The installation instructions can be found here: http://www.eclipse.org/laszlo/release/0.2.0/ . We strongly recommend that you use the "all in one" installation, if possible.

And, it is easier than ever to get involved in the IDEforLaszlo project. Download the sources and fix your favorite bug! The list of current open bugs is here: http://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/ . Simply enter "laszlo" as in Quick Search field.

We look forward to hearing from you!

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OpenLaszlo 3.1 Released

Friday, November 18th, 2005

We are pleased to announce that OpenLaszlo 3.1 is available for download. We are excited about the application development possibilities with all of the new features and performance improvements in this release. We wish to thank all of the community members who contributed code, submitted bug fixes, tested the incremental versions, and provided feedback.

Here are the important links:
• DOWNLOADS: http://www.openlaszlo.org/download
• RELEASE NOTES: http://www.openlaszlo.org/download/binaries/3.1/release-notes.html
• IDE4LASZLO: http://eclipse.org/laszlo

You can also keep up with the latest features and fixes in the code by downloading the nightly builds: http://www.openlaszlo.org/download/

OpenLaszlo 3.1 provides a significant number of new features, including a rich text class, new components: hbox, vbox, and image, Flash 8 file generation, local datasets, browser history integration: the default HTML wrappers now include support for browser history and setcanvasAttribute(), an XMLHttpRequest ("AJAX") API, a setcanvasAttribute() Javascript function that can optionally add browser history events, applications now default to window size, a "View source" menu item, a charting and graphing components (beta), a tutorial introduction to Drawview, version detection, developer console enhancements, a global "hand cursor" parameter, a backtrace facility and other improvements in the debugger, changes to the splash screen such that it now takes percentages, and new code in the incubator.

There are also numerous bug fixes, and performance improvements. To view the complete list, see JIRA: http://www.openlaszlo.org/jira/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?reset=true&pid=10020&fixfor=10085

Posted in Announcements, Releases | 2 Comments »

Laszlo Systems Ships OpenLaszlo 3.0

Tuesday, April 26th, 2005

OpenLaszlo 3.0 introduces SOLO deployment, unicode support, drawing API, browser integration, and numerous performance improvements. [more]

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LPS 3.0 b1 available

Friday, December 24th, 2004

Source and binary distributions are ready for download.

[more]

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