laszlo popularity

[nyl]

I searched the web about laszlo. The product is amazing and the documentation is great too.

Many people wonder why it is not widely used and if it ever will.

I posted a question in this forum asking for help about sending a simple form. This request seemed reasonable to me since almost every web site ever made uses a form to collect data from users. Usually forms talks to a database or they may just send an email. The answer could probably help others too with the same issue.

I didn't receive a reply in this forum and this is the only forum i know regarding the laszlo product.

There are tens if not hundreds of examples, books and forums for PHP and Flash. There is one for Laszlo.

Every time I asked a question in any of the php or flash forums, I received answers in a few hours, sometimes in minutes. And they were different answers to obtain hte same result using different methods. amazing service.

I posted a question about the laszlo product in the one and only laszlo forum and i didn't get any answer. After three days still no answer.

I'm now going back to flash and php and keep using macromedia flash 8. I'll use the text fields that i will grab into the main window, the GET method to pass values to the php script and talk to the mysql DB. Everything will work fine.
Not probably efficient like laszlo, but at least it will work and me myself a mere average programmer will make it work!

Losing me as customer is a big deal, since you will lose my company and probably all my circle of developers too. The same is true for other people who tried laszlo and probably gave up, since i see that there are many unanswered questions in this forum. The documentation is great but it is just one. If there was only the official macromedia documentation about flash i'm not sure they would have grabbed 99% of the market.

But i'm thinking that may be this company strategy is to get only big customers and do the job themselves.

If customers are not answering many questions in the forums it means developers are not being helped. And since this is the only forum available to them, you should dedicate a person that every day at least from 9am to 5pm checks all the requests and answers all the unanswered questions. This person should do just that, not answering the phone, updating the web site etc. With those big customers like earthlink, ziff davis and yahoo you have , I think you can afford one least a person to deal with the mere developers questions.

good luck with your product, i think it will end up being an internal development platform and you guys will just do consulting and development for major customers.

[d~l]

Have you wondered what the link at the bottom of this page means?

"Accelerate this thread"

... but admittedly a bit too costly a support service, aimed at corporations with deep pockets.

Losing me as customer is a big deal, since you will lose my company and probably all my circle of developers too.

This is not the only forum .. look at the mailing lists in openlaszlo.org (http://www.openlaszlo.org/development/lists/)

Most of the OpenLaszlo team respond to enquiries posted at laszlo-dev or laszlo-user.

...

My understanding is that, since the decision to go open source, the OpenLaszlo site is gradually replacing the LaszloSystems site (which predates OpenLaszlo).

In fact, here is a google search (http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2004-18,GGLD:en&q=site:www%2Eopenlaszlo%2Eorg+form) for you in OpenLaszlo site, and another google search (http://www.laszlosystems.com/developers/community/forums/search.php?action=showresults&searchid=104813&sortby=lastpost&sortorder=descending) in LaszloSystems site.

...


Sorry, I did not add the link to the wiki (http://wiki.openlaszlo.org/OpenLaszlo_for_HTML_developers).

[Geoff2010]

Taking a totally different angle to the argument... Why can't you take the time to work stuff out on your own? I bet if you spent 30 minutes making a test application with a form based on the limited documentation, you could get it working... (maybe, i don't know your competence level)

Not to vent or anything, but developers who want every answer handed to them immediately without any work or experimentation are just LAZY! I have found that there is _enough_ documentation and information to solve almost any problem I have come across. Granted, the user base for Laszlo isn't as big as Flash or PHP... so you won't find nearly as many people just waiting to "show off" their knowledge.

Laszlo is an amazing product for being open source. If I paid $10k for the package I would also expect < 1 hour turnaround time for questions... but I don't because someone else spent a lot of time writing really good software only to let me use it free of cost! If you aren't willing to make some effort, then full priced, fully supported software is probably the right choice for you anyway.

[caclark]

I think if perhaps you looked in the documentation that you claim is so good (and rightfully so), you'd find examples of forms and submitting to a back-end process.

Also, if you'd search the forums, especially the Tip of the Week, that you'd find a working example.

But hey, it wasn't at your fingertips and you don't know how to find the other forums since this seems to "the one and only laszlo forum"...so go back to kindergarten and quit crying.

BTW, you'll notice that questions that go unanswered are usually along the lines of "what, didn't they read _any_ of the documentation before posting?" variety...

If you'd searched, you'd found this: http://www.laszlosystems.com/developers/community/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1948&highlight=%3Csubmit, but that assumes you know how to use a search facility...and that seems questionable at this point.

[Bryan]

Coming from the various Director and Flash communities over the years I'll be the first to admit that things within the OpenLaszlo (or any open source project) community are very different.

With the Macromedia groups, staffers are always lurking and more often than not they are extremely active. This is their job as support and evangelists - they are paid to hold your hand and evangelise their products/platform. This in-turn helps to build the community as more experienced developers often begin to help out with support on the lists and forums (in exchange for swag or access to beta releases), lifting some of the burden of support off of Macromedia. This in-turn allows them to focus on new features, paid support, upgrades, marketing and other ways to earn/extort your money.

Open source projects are quite a bit different. Nobody is getting paid for support or evangelism. We're all having to figure it out as we go along as Geoff stated - running simple tests and experiments to help understand how things work. One god-send with OpenLaszlo is that the documentation is largely excellent (especially when compared with other OS projects). Many of us try to contribute to the forums/mailing lists when time permits - to help give back to the community - but it's simply unrealistic to expect the level of support from open source projects that you MIGHT get from a commercial product (without additional expense).

Also, the more the community grows the more likely it is that there will be enough users to help out with support, but we're not there yet. One thing that I think really needs to be addressed is how to provide support for artists, designers and multimedia types that doesn't simply get lumped in with the more enterprise/engineering discussions that often arise on the forums and mailing lists. Creative types (myself included) don't necessarily take to code like hardcore programmers, and currently OpenLaszlo provides users no alternative than to work with code alone (maybe KToon could change that down the road?).

Perhaps looking at projects such as Processing (http://processing.org - an open-source designer's programming language) for inspiration in dealing with the art/design support side of things might be a worthwhile endeavour, as they've been able to build a great community that has a nice balance between code and art.

Anyway, OpenLaszlo is fantastic (IMHO) - but it does (arguably) require some additional effort than tools such as Flash or Flex. However, with OpenLaszlo you're not necessarily reliant on one company to provide support, fix bugs, or provide new features and directions. And of course, it's free and open.

[Bryan]

One more thing. It's an issue I have with many open source projects, and that's the tendency of some individuals to get irate over seemingly common, simple or seemingly obvious questions. Truth be told, I often find myself telling users to "RTFM" - but if there are people asking these questions, then I'd suggest maybe we need to look at how to better address these common issues. There's nothing that will drive me away from a product/project faster than an abusive community.

How could we improve support?

Oliver has been posting some excellent examples/tutorials on the OpenLaszlo weblog as of late, but unless you're subscribed to the RSS feed you may not know of them.

http://weblog.openlaszlo.org/archives/2006/01/another-approach-to-state/
http://weblog.openlaszlo.org/archives/2006/01/conditionalize-visibility-with-constraints/

The Wiki (http://wiki.openlaszlo.org/Main_Page) has some great information, but it's not always evident what exactly is in there at any given time.

The mailing lists (http://www.openlaszlo.org/development/lists/) are another useful resource, as are the archives (http://www.openlaszlo.org/pipermail/laszlo-user/) - although 'search' would be welcome.

Perhaps, migrating many of the support features (forums, wikis, mailing lists/archives, weblogs, tutorials, documentation, etc) under the OpenLaszlo.org website would be a start to bring everything together?

Also, perhaps finding ways to make it easier for members of the community to contribute to the overall site (ala Drupal, etc) might also help to further develop support via the community?

Personally, I'd also really love to look at how we can get more designers and creative people working with OpenLaszlo. There are some things (such as constraints, states, etc) that will make their work so much easier - but currently all support and docs surrounding these concepts are very 'engineering' oriented.

[Geoff2010]

what are designers?

:)

[bfagan]

Wow. This original message in this thread was ignorant and unnecessarily negative.

I've been developing in Laszlo for about 6 months. There is a learning curve involved with using ANY new piece of technology. At first, I couldn't figure out the difference between a datapath and a datapointer. Now I consider myself at an expert level with the system.

Once you get over the inital learning curve, Laszlo is much easier to develop in than Flash itself ever was, at least by my experience.

I no longer want to code a frontend in anything but Laszlo. My job is much more enjoyable these days.

I think your conclusion is immature and wrong. Personally, if you were representing my company, I'd fire you.

[Bryan]

"what are designers?"

And it's just that type of attitude from programmers and engineers that makes me want to run screaming "Revolution commence! Viva le Bezier et la WYSIWG!"...

Then back in the real world I merely like to torment programmers by insisting my design hinges on the use of 2 pixel flat bevels with 4 colour linear gradient and a slight drop shadow at 135 degrees - all to be created dynamically based on the custom font and kerning I've specified in Illustrator. ;-)

[Geoff2010]

I needed a good laugh... thanks!

[jcmaxx]

I've been using Laszlo for a couple months now and am a complete convert. This is, by far, the best open-source tool I've ever worked with. The documentation, and the forums are far better than most. I would argue that they are better than a number of commercial products. As bfagan said, there is a learning curve involved; there always is for anything with this much power.

Even though I'm new to Laszlo, I try to answer questions in the forums when possible. Unfortunately, some questions are just too stupid to waste my time. When someone obviously hasn't taken even enough time to look at the basic demo, it's hard to justify replying with anything other than "RTFM". Since this would be rude and might drive people off, most of us simply don't reply.

I would like to personally thank all of the contributors to this forum. My company is in the process of fulfilling a very large contract and have converted the entire interface over to Laszlo. We couldn't have done it without all the support provided.

[bfagan]

That's the word I was looking for: crass.

Nyl posted a question on Sunday and waited just one day, until Monday, at a time when people weren't even in to their desks yet, before posting this rather crass rant.

I'm sure his question is answered in the LZX Reference, and again in the Developer's documentation, and in the various in depth examples provided by Laszlo Systems, and I'm sure, many, many times in these forums.

If you post questions here, people are usually more than happy to help you. Occasionally, I'll post quite an advanced question and not get an answer. If I figure out the answer to my own question, I post it to the benefit of everyone else.

There's one key thing you need both in dealing with a community and learning a new language or development paradigm: patience. (not to mention good manners)

Being that you've decided to, quite rudely, make a personal attack at the efforts of the Laszlo group, I don't think people will be as likely to help you. Perhaps you should stew on it for a little while and apologize.

[caclark]

Originally posted by nyl

I posted a question about the laszlo product in the one and only laszlo forum and i didn't get any answer. After three days still no answer.


Good point about the question-to-crying time, bfagan. No wonder this person can't figure out how to do it, he/she can't even calculate the amount of elapsed time from 01-08-2006 01:18 AM to 01-09-2006 02:40 AM as reported by the OpenLaszlo forum software. Either that, or blatantly lied in an attempt to bolster his/her point. Either way, he/she looks impatient, immature, and foolish at this point.

I think there have been numerous chances for people to post "RTFM" replies and haven't. If a question with a really obvious answer is posted and it draws a response, it's usually with a reference to the chapter of the appropriate doc or a link to another thread where it's already answered. I've had much ruder comments on other forums both commercial and open source.

[nyl]

to everyone if I have been rude.

[bfagan]

Thank you. All forgiven.

[mallchin]

I agree with the original post, there is a severe lack of support available for the Laszlo n00b.

Many languages have an abundance of community help available on the web, from irc channels to forums. Laszlo has almost none.

IMHO there ought to be someone manning the forums answering new posts. This is an absolute priority. If you want people to uptake Lazlo you need to help them do it.

I myself have a couple of simple questions that could be answered with relative ease, yet I am unable to find the answers anywhere. I have even found other people asking the same questions in these every forums, so I am certainly not alone.

If someone were manning the forums I would already have the answers I need, as it is, I don't.

</whine>


Furthermore:

* mylaszlo.com is dead
* http://www.blogbox.com/photoblox.php demo continually displays a spinner
* http://www.blogbox.com/linkblox.php demo doesn't load
* http://www.antisleep.com/infoblox/ errors 404

[spoco2]

Originally posted by mallchin
I agree with the original post, there is a severe lack of support available for the Laszlo n00b.

Many languages have an abundance of community help available on the web, from irc channels to forums. Laszlo has almost none.


Firstly: This is an Open Source product. You aren't paying for support, you save a whole lot of money in up front software costs and ongoing running costs, you have to expect a bit of a trade off. What you loose in paid forum supporters you gain in cost of ownership, and the ability to look under the covers and tinker with the bits you don't like.

Secondly: I'm of the opinion that the support and reference material is first rate. We originally weighed up this vs Macromedage (now Adobe) Flex, and while Flex was painful to get into, and hard to learn. Laszlo gave us:

* The sensational Laszlo Explorer: http://www.laszlosystems.com/lps/laszlo-in-ten-minutes/ which gives you interactive, live, code that you could investigate, play with and get a feel and understanding on how the language works

* A top notch Reference Guide: http://www.laszlosystems.com/lps-3.2/docs/reference/index.html
Again, with live code and examples, this is a supurb guide that has answered almost all my questions along with...

* The Software Developers Guide: http://www.laszlosystems.com/lps-3.2/docs/guide/index.html
Which also has live examples to play with. These have a couple of rough edges here and there (mostly only with the brand new stuff that isn't complete though... see Graphs as an example), but overall are some of the best supporting documents to a program language I've come across.

* This forum: Seriously... if your question is relavent, nicely worded and not something that could've been easily looked up in the previous locales, then you'll likely get people trying to help you. It's been great. Also, the host of already replied posts give a wealth of great info.

Also, to a lesser degree, The Wiki: http://wiki.openlaszlo.org/ , The Mailing List (I just don't get these as being a useful format for communication myself, and I think it being separate from this forum is damaging as it splits the knowledge): http://www.openlaszlo.org/lists and the blogs: http://www.planetlaszlo.org/


IMHO there ought to be someone manning the forums answering new posts. This is an absolute priority. If you want people to uptake Lazlo you need to help them do it.

That's a paid product mentality... this is Open Source, the community helps itself. As the community grows, so do the number of people willing, and with time, to answer questions and help out others. If you really need something answered you can opt to pay and have your thread 'Accelerated' and then Laszlo Systems will put their staff onto it to try to fix it.


I myself have a couple of simple questions that could be answered with relative ease, yet I am unable to find the answers anywhere. I have even found other people asking the same questions in these every forums, so I am certainly not alone.

I had a bash at answering some of your posts... but never go into things expecting for your problems to be solved on a forum such as this... it's a great resource, post your questions by all means, and some will be answered, but at the same time try to nut things out on your own. And if you do so before someone else answers, post the answer back here to help others... that's the only way it all works.


If someone were manning the forums I would already have the answers I need, as it is, I don't.

Maybe my answers will help you, maybe not... but they might head you in the right direction... keep reading the various sources of information and play around... you'll be suprised by how much falls out in the wash with a bit of playing with the code after reading the Software developers guide.


Furthermore:
* mylaszlo.com is dead
* http://www.blogbox.com/photoblox.php demo continually displays a spinner
* http://www.blogbox.com/linkblox.php demo doesn't load
* http://www.antisleep.com/infoblox/ errors 404 [/B]

I do agree there needs to be a bit of housecleaning about the place... and places like mylaszlo have fallen a bit by the wayside (they had stopped being used much anyway)... But the team is working on the new releases I think moreso than anything else... at least if the frequency of nightly builds is anything to go by.

PS. I am no employee of Laszlosystems, I'm just a coder who works with Laszlo day in day out and see it as a supurb product with a great future.

[mallchin]

It's strange, on one hand I think Laszlo is an excellent development environment and could easily overtake the web, yet on the other I think it won't because of a lack of resources.

I'm more then willing to have a good stab at something myself, and I've pretty much finished my small application. I suppose I should be happy I've managed to do so in only a couple of days, but I wouldn't feel as confident developing something as complex as the projects I've tackled in PHP.

I feel confident PHP will have an answer to almost anything I could throw at it, yet some of the simpler tasks in Laszlo are undocumented and don't work as expected (such as applying a style to a view).

I don't mean to come across rude, and I appreciate the help and resources that are available, but I think with a little loving they could be so much more.

[sudkcoce]

Don't be so negative.

http://www.laszlosystems.com/developers/community/forums/showthread.php?threadid=5855&highlight=tree+problem

You shall see a _simple and to the point question_, I am not a stupid user and I tend to read documentation before posting.

...well just read the post.

Rgds,
Kris

[d~l]

sudkcoce wrote ..


.... I guess I've had it with your framework

.... I thought it was too good to be true...

.... Bye, community, and good luck.

So why are you back? Tried out other opensource frameworks?

[sudkcoce]

Just checking if anything has changed.

Thanks for your concern.

And yes, I am developing in:
server: Java, jsp, webwork, hibernate
client: DHTML (prototype, scriptaculous)

Alll above mentioned comunities are great in stuff that open laszlo lacks.

[d~l]

Not rude . just blunt .. curious why you changed your earlier views.

Sometimes posts are ignored here if there has been no obvious attempt to search the forum (http://www.laszlosystems.com/developers/community/forums/search.php?s=&action=showresults&searchid=152659&sortby=lastpost&sortorder=descending) .. but this might not be the case with your earlier problem.

You can add your comments to slashdot (http://www.laszlosystems.com/developers/community/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6346).

[sudkcoce]

No, this was not the case with my problem.
And I haven't changed my views, I am just curious if anything here has changed. My previously mentioned post was not at all negative (note the sentence: "... too good to be true..."), but it clearly states my concern with the framework.
After all, such frameworks are here to shorten your development cycle, not prolongue it.

Best regards,
KRis

[bfagan]

sudkcoce,

I've been doing quite advanced things with Laszlo and a J2EE backend. Never had a problem.

[sudkcoce]

No comment.