2.2 Guide Beatifully Written

[Cort]

Hi,

I just wanted to mention how much I'm enjoying the 2.2 developers guide. Some things I particularly love about it are.

It doesn't talk down to the developer. As a result it can be terse and informative while simultaneously showing examples and discussing them. Also as a result, it will also make the guide worthwhile even after the first read as we'll be able to mull over the general principles described and better understand the system on a second visit.

The blend also makes it a pleasure to read. Examples are important, but without some accompanying principles, they get booring. This is a really nice blend in that regard too.

Finally, it's also nice how the examples are interactive when you're at the computer, but the behavior is also described if you just print out some chapters to read on the couch.

Just an excellent job.

Thanks.

-Cort

[jsundman]

Laszlo documentation is a team/collaborative project. I'm the lead writer and overall editor, and everybody else on the engineering team contributes. Most engineers have written drafts of at least one Dguide chapter, and several engineers have written several chapters.

We of course welcome compliments, but we also solicit suggestions for improvement. We're working a a bunch of enhancements for the next release.

John, the doc guy.

[turgayz]

Hi,
I also agree, I liked the 2.2 documentation very much. Very well written in a tutorial-like style.

There are a few typos I found, and I have taken notes. If you want I can send them for you to correct.

Or, do I need to look at the 3.0a docs, maybe they are already fixed? Is the documentation very much changed in 3.0a?

Regards,
Turgay Zengin

[Cort]

Well I suppose if I were to offer suggestions I'd say.

1) First, do no harm. I like the things I described above and find the mix/combination nice. I suppose the fact that the engineers help with the content is probably important to the blend.

2) It would be nice to have the reference document in a format that is designed for printing. It would also be nice to have a one page list of the most important tags and classes that we can print out and just put by the keyboard while learning.

3) The methodology and debugging section of the guide could always be larger and include more configuration specific scenarios and popular techniques. I'm not sure exactly what would be best, but I can think of a few things that might be worth considering.

For me it would be nice to have some more information on setting up and configuring IDEA.

Even how to set it up with the source code.(The information on how to set up IDEA for lzx also seems to describe an old version of IDEA. I dont see the Options menu item in 4.5.) This kind of information is really nice though.

What are folks favorite debugging techniques? One fellow mentioned in the forums that in addition to the debug console, if one were to use Mozilla and it's debugger that they can see some events. I'd be interested in knowing how that works and when that might be helpful.

Do people use telnet to debug laszlo applications in some scenarios, like to check the data binding or heartbeats? If so there may be some tips to share on how to do that that are habitual and would seem obvius to the folks who often do it, but wouldn't occur to others like myself that either only know the basics or wouldn't think of it at all.

That's what I could think of. FWIW. Thanks for asking,

-Cort

[Maxwell]

Yep, the documentation is lovely.

[turgayz]

OK, here goes some questions/corrections while reading the guide. Some of them are very unimportant typos, just writing because I had taken note of them:

1) (QUESTION) Chapter 1 - Section 4.Security Model:
It is said that " Web services and databases used by a Laszlo application are also secured using a per-user authentication model."
I didn't quite understand this. Can you please describe a little?

2) (TYPO) Chapter 2 - Section 3.2
"In JavaScript, the this keyword is used to refers to the object though which the function was invoked"
refers --> refer
though --> through

3) (TYPO) Chapter 4 - Section 2.2
" the canvas, by default, has a nonzero width (500 pixels) and height (400 pixels)"

and

"defines a visual object that has a width of 600 pixels and a height of 400 pixels."

contradict with each other.

4) (TYPO) Chapter 4 - Section 2.3.1
"The second has no color assigned to it and the third has zero height"

But the third view has:
<view width="0" height="50" bgcolor="blue"/>

5) (TYPO) Chapter 4 - Section 2.7.1
http://localhost:8080/lps-3.0a/lps/utils/lps/viewer.jsp?file=/my-apps/copy-of-hello.lzx
should read:
http://localhost:8080/lps-3.0a/lps/utils/viewer/viewer.jsp?file=/my-apps/copy-of-hello.lzx

6) (TYPO) Chapter 9 - Section 2.1
expanasion --> expansion

7) (TYPO) Chapter 9 - Section 4.1
"because all that does is reset the x attribute to a constant amount (150px)."

should be 200px

8) (TYPO) Chapter 10 - Section 4
"The first selectNext(2)" --> "The first selectChild(2)"

9) (TYPO) Chapter 11 - Section 1
instantiatedw --> instantiated

10) (TYPO) Chapter 13 - Section 4.2
"locked an unlocked" --> "locked and unlocked"

11) (TYPO) Chapter 14 - Section 3.1
"or an of the forty-nine" --> "or any of the forty-nine"

performe --> perform

This is all I have for now, did I say before that I liked the docs very much? :)

-Turgay

[turgayz]

And there is also some grocery advice in the docs too:

Go to http://www.laszlosystems.com/developers/learn/documentation/release-notes.php

and search for "tomatoes"