Top 5

[pc]

1. Presentation server-less deployment on production server with developer compiler. Flash 6+ swf/client directly interacting with data & business logic layers without need of proxy server.
Coming soon as announced @ www.davidtemkin.com
2. GUI IDE - Zero-install/config browser based and/or Dreamweaver extension like Flex Builder (Laszlo Builder) and/or Eclipse plug-in
3. AMF support - Integrate OpenAMF. Interact with AMFPHP, Flash Remoting Gateway, etc.. Create an open-source alternate to Flash Remoting Gateway built into Laszlo.
4. Web services dynamically generated in JAVA, CFML, C#.NET, VB.NET, etc.. Generated code can then be further modified by hand. Similar to SNAPP MX @ www.snappmx.com
5. More built-in functionality including more components for almost all common tasks without scripting. These would all be tags with attributes. Enter tags or drag and drop the components, add/change attributes, done. They could be extended with scripting as needed but powerful functionality would be accomplished with little or no scripting.

This is mainly a productivity/efficiency top 5

What is your top 5?

[nmadness]

1. Server-less deployment. Publish from your machine to a standard HTTP server.
2. SWF v6 support for features such as Flash video (flv), sockets, data-exchange without the server, etc.
3. Additional components geared towards more creative uses such as games, blogboxes, simulations, etc.
4. A GUI that can be tailored to meet the various needs of users that may not be overly comfortable writing code at first.
5. An IDE for developers that focuses directly on their needs - including unit testing, documentation, code hinting, refactoring, etc. This could be a plugin to Eclipse or some other existing IDE.

So, now that Laszlo is open... who wants to do what? The first two (along with OpenAMF support) I'd imagine are largely dependent on the folks at Laszlo. The rest really depends on us getting organized and finding some resources.

I'm extremely interested in #3 and #4, but I'm very interested in hearing what the community needs/wants before getting too far in.

[wicki]

From a productivity standpoint, Snapp MX is definitely worth giving a try. Its focus is narrower than Laszlo and Flex in that it targets the rapid development of form-based Business Applications.

[david]

These lists are helpful. I've got a question: When you ask for AMF or OpenAMF support, which aspect of AMF interests you most:

-- compression of data into binary
-- more direct access to back-end logic
-- no need for intervening XML layer
-- reuse your existing server-side AMF implementation
-- or...?

Much of what's done by AMF is currently done by LPS proper, but within the LZX framework. This isn't necessarily obvious, because from an external standpoint, it looks like you're fetching XML from a back-end and parsing it on the client, but this is not how the mechanism actually works. Data (XML) requests are compressed into SWF bytecode by LPS which, when into the client app, are expanded into in-memory DOM objects. This saves bandwidth and client CPU.

"Serverless" Laszlo apps (LPS-free deployments) will not use this mechanism, since it relies on the LPS proxy.

Some use cases would help here. Have you looked at the Java RPC mechanisms in LPS?

David Temkin
CTO, Laszlo Systems

[shapiros]

A huge advantage of something like AMFPHP is it's ability to move data efficiently across the network. Are you saying that Laszlo moves data equally efficiently?

Thank you,

Stephen Shapiro

[ikester]

Originally posted by david

-- compression of data into binary
-- more direct access to back-end logic
-- no need for intervening XML layer
-- reuse your existing server-side AMF implementation
-- or...?


All of the above :)

Mostly reusing an existing server-side AMF or other remoting gateway. I have briefly seen the Laszlo Java RPC documentation and I feel that programming resources could be used more efficiently if something already proven was used instead. Why dedicate so much effort into another proprietary remoting protocol when there is one already working?

I have successfully worked with OpenAMF (Java) and I know those guys would be interested in helping integrate that project with Laszlo. They have already posted here and elsewhere regarding this possibility.

The Flash player already has all the hooks in place to "talk" AMF which I'm sure would greatly simplify the Laszlo compiler side of things.

On an unrelated note, IMHO, the RPC syntax could be more abstract. I think the currently documented tags are very implementation specific and make the front-end developer's life more difficult. It should be possible to abstract away the specifics of AMV/SOAP/Whatever into a configuration file or deployment descriptor. It would actually be great if one could code to a standard remoting API regardless of the implementation and that the transport, etc. could be changed at runtime without affecting the app code.