A Common Framework

The Rich Internet Application (RIA) world these days is a soup of technologies looking for a common ingredient. Consider all the varied and often overlapping technologies for creating web app functionality: JavaScript, AJAX, Java, XML, HTML, and Flash all either compete or cooperate in building today's crop of web apps. Will we someday have a uniform, well-defined way of building components for this new platform? Jim Grandy of Laszlo Systems thinks so.

Laszlo Systems OpenLaszlo RIA platform just might provide a part of that brave new landscape. OpenLaszlo is essentially an app server (a servlet to be exact) that reads in an XML file (in the syntax of Laszlo's LZX language) and generates a flash-based app to send to the client. Future plans for OpenLaszlo also include the ability to generate DHTML instead of Flash; clearly the Laszlo people see which way the wind is blowing. The LZX syntax is clear and concise, and generates tremendous levels of functionality in a very few lines of code. If you haven't played with it, you can find a very nice 10-minute introductory tutorial at the OpenLaszlo site. It's a really interesting stab at solving the problem of standardizing web application APIs.

Posted by Kevin Carlson at 02:39 PM  Permalink

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