Graphical IDE

[yjordens]

I think if designers "developers" want to use openlaszlo they expect at least a nice IDE that allows them to design their GUI instead of creating an xml doc (even if you have support and drag & drop for these tags). The concept an the architecture is great but using it to create a front-end as is, is way behind tools like visual studio.

Maybe this isn't the primer goal of the openlaszlo team but it is sure something people will take into account when evaluating this product (opensource or not)
it is just a hint !

[hqm]

IBM has done some work on an Eclipse plugin for source code editing, and they have recently released a graphical GUI layout tools also, though it is still at an early stage of development.

[michaelsica]

I agree. There are in (IMO) 2 things missing from Laszlo.

1) An awesome book about Laszlo. Including best practices and common patterns for development.

2) An awesome IDE. The one from IBM is still too early to use. If Laszlo Systems made an IDE for OpenLaszlo and sold it for a few hundred bucks I'd probably buy it.

I would suggest having 2 tiers.

Tier 1) Free community edition. Basically a text editor with color-coding and a wizard to setup a project.

Tier 2) $199 Pro version. Full-blown IDE with drag 'n drop GUI builder, debugger, code completion, installed server instances, etc...

-michael.
http://www.michaelsica.com/

[maritimesource]

Has anything changed on the Laszlo GUI Builder IDE front?

It gets tiring specifying width/heights , x/y coords, and spacing all of the time...

Are there any good tools out there for quickly building GUIs?

Thanks

[illogic_code]

well... i really dont know if this helps... but i am doing one project conversor of delphi PRJ to laszlo LZX.
On this way i can use the GUI of my delphi 5 to make fast GUI design.
Its still on very beggining, but i already planned to put call method to converte too. All the work toke me about 8 or 10 hours, but is already paing the price. I think that is almost time to me improve the tool.

What u guys think about that? I really would like to know what people think of this solution. Good and bad points.

Anybody want to contribute? i could give the source-code without problem. (23k until now)

[DocRocz]

I'm very surprised that with the resources that Openlaszlo has no one has used the current learning environment to work up an IDE that works with it.

It would make perfect sense.
You have the docs there and you have a test window.
Now you'd just need the aspect of the GUI editor.
Something like the current Eclipse plug in where the components could just be dropped in the canvas area.

That would be my wish.
I'm very new to this but the concept appears to be a very logical step especially if it appeared with the documentation, such as in the Laszlo in 10 minutes.

[hqm]

Originally posted by DocRocz
I'm very surprised that with the resources that Openlaszlo has no one has used the current learning environment to work up an IDE that works with it.

It would make perfect sense.
You have the docs there and you have a test window.
Now you'd just need the aspect of the GUI editor.
Something like the current Eclipse plug in where the components could just be dropped in the canvas area.

That would be my wish.
I'm very new to this but the concept appears to be a very logical step especially if it appeared with the documentation, such as in the Laszlo in 10 minutes.

That's an excellent idea and makes a lot of sense to do using OpenLaszlo itself, and we have talked about it before. Some developers have started such a project but no one has carried it through as of yet.

[l0gin]

Hi there,

I have already though of it :
the application would be a lzapp of course, and when dropping a component from toolbox, the lzapp would create the component, it is not virtual, its already "working" !

We can go deeper this way though hu ?

Bye !

[jarecsni]

That's an excellent idea and makes a lot of sense to do using OpenLaszlo itself, and we have talked about it before. Some developers have started such a project but no one has carried it through as of yet.

Hi,

in my opinion this is something that the company LaszloTechnologies should orchestrate. It will not happen on its own. Opensource is great, but OL has not gathered such an impetus and momentum yet, as anyone could expect its developer base to produce a rich IDE for OL. To be honest, the Eclipse OL Plugin is really unexplainable for me, even if it's 0.2 it offered a rich set of functionalities. Why not Laszlo goes and buys it up?

CU
Janos

[jarecsni]

Hi guys,

do you think it would be legally ok to download the archived IDE plugin project, upload it to sourceforge, and begin to work on it??

I'd gladly do that.

CU
Janos

[jarecsni]

Hi,

just stumbled upon the archived page of the IDE for Laszlo. The creation review PDF (see below) states, that the project is sponsored by Laszlo Systems. Could anybody from the company tell, why Laszlo Systems ceased to support this very important initiative?


http://www.eclipse.org/proposals/laszlo/ (http://www.eclipse.org/proposals/laszlo/)


http://www.eclipse.org/proposals/laszlo/Laszlo_Creation_Review.pdf (http://www.eclipse.org/proposals/laszlo/Laszlo_Creation_Review.pdf)


CU
Janos

[nicko]

This quote from Raju Bitter in the comments section of the blog here http://weblog.openlaszlo.org/archives/2007/03/making-the-openlaszlo-community-shine-%e2%80%93-a-new-face-on-the-openlaszlo-team/

"There are plans for a new OpenLaszlo IDE, but I cannot give you any more information right now."

I imagine they'd want to create their own IDE so they can sell it to users since that would be one way for an open source company to make money. Probably the reason why the eclipse IDE was abandoned.

I think it would certainly be a productivity tool users would pay for.

[Antoine]

Hi guys,

do you think it would be legally ok to download the archived IDE plugin project, upload it to sourceforge, and begin to work on it??

I'd gladly do that.

CU
Janos

It certainly is fine - that is what open source is all about! You will need to be careful about what licence you chose, if you want to change from the current one