Question about limitations

[rtaylor777]

Hi, I'm attempting to evaluate Laszlo. I just started reading the Developer's guide and I worked through many of the tutorials.

I have a few questions for which the answers would help me considerably
during my evaluation.

1. Laszlo is primarily a user interface development language?
2. Is it possible or practical to use other languages such as Java
to add functionality?
3. If I see something that someone developed using Flash is it reasonable
to hope to be able to do the same thing with Laszlo?
4. Does Laszlo have the same sort of power as Java? Byte and bit manipulation for example?
5. Is the Laszlo security model as much of a tight jacket as Java's security
model? Can it access components from other domains etc.?

Examples of features or programs I would tackle if possible.
a) My encryption program http://www.javacrypt.com/crypt30a/index.html
Interface for it at least if not the encryption algorithms.

b) Shoutcast media player http://www.shoutcast.com/shoutcast_player?stationid=6956&Genre=Pop&ContentFlag=1
Example of a shoutcast url http://94.23.36.140:80
Example of asx file used to make mediaplayer play the above mentioned url:
http://www.javacrypt.com/player/playinmediaplayer.asx
Try it out I was unable to make it work as a resource in a view.

c) Webpage in Flash : http://www.articulate.com/community/blogdemo/blog_webobject/player.html At about the 3rd frame inside the flash demo notice that there is the Google website displayed. You can even search for your website and interact with it.

d) Lastly if nothing else I would like to build a replacement for the Tiki interface on my site http://www.javacrypt.com . I would have to rebuild all the PHP to work with XML.

Thank you and happy coding :)

[pugmaster]

1. Laszlo is primarily a user interface development language?

Yes, it executes on the browser and competes against Flex (Flash) and various Ajax toolkits.

2. Is it possible or practical to use other languages such as Java
to add functionality?

Not within the client. There isn't any practical reason to do so.

3. If I see something that someone developed using Flash is it reasonable
to hope to be able to do the same thing with Laszlo?

Yes, Laszlo executes on either the Flash or DHTML (ajax) platforms, or even both. Take a
look at http://www.nkleindesign.org/pong/flash and http://www.nkleindesign.org/pong/ajax to see how a single Laszlo executable can run across differing platforms without sacrificing functionality.

4. Does Laszlo have the same sort of power as Java? Byte and bit manipulation for example?

You want to phase this question as "does Javascript have the same sort of power as Java" and the answer is "yes". Since Laszlo uses LZX for the declarative portion of the language and JavaScript 1.4 for the procedural areas.

5. Is the Laszlo security model as much of a tight jacket as Java's security
model? Can it access components from other domains etc.?

Laszlo executes across different platforms (Flash and DHTML) and executes with their security models. For instance, it can access components from other domains in Flash by using the crossdomain.xml file to establish permission levels.

There are several free chapters from "Laszlo in Action" available at http://www.manning.com/klein. While there have been many minor (annoying) changes to Laszlo the major concepts are still valid.

- Norman Klein
Author: Laszlo in Action

[rtaylor777]

Thank you for those answers Norman :)

I look forward to learning more about Laszlo.

Take Care,
Robert Taylor