Nick Sieger: RailsConf: Mike Pence - Laszlo on Railsdo what you lovetag:blog.nicksieger.com,2005:TypoTypo2007-08-31T16:41:58+00:00Nick Siegerurn:uuid:1cf8443e-d948-41d8-81cd-166a92b98ab32006-06-28T15:00:00+00:002007-08-31T16:41:58+00:00RailsConf: Mike Pence - Laszlo on Rails<p>Mike Pence, professional web surfer, and Java free since March 15,
talked about <em>Sex, drugs, rock and roll</em> or <em>Laszlo on Rails</em>.</p>
<h2>Where are we going on the web?</h2>
<ul>
<li>Google Maps, Yahoo Music Engine, Google Spreadsheets – the web is
looking more and more like a desktop application.</li>
<li>“Web two oh” – attention to design and more attractive interfaces</li>
<li>User customization a.k.a. “Pimp my site”</li>
<li>Use of rich media on the web, e.g., YouTube. It’s an expectation of
the next generation of users that the web will be content-rich and
an entertainment experience.</li>
<li>The Holy Grail! Applications that require no downloads,
are instant/automatically updated, are distributed.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Open Laszlo</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.pandora.com">Pandora</a> cited as an introductory example</li>
<li>Mike gave a 10 minute overview of Laszlo using the Open Laszlo
Explorer.</li>
<li>Laszlo explorer shows you standard widgetry – canvas, text,
buttons, windows, forms</li>
<li>The power of Laszlo starts to show with data sets, with convenient
data binding utilities, an extensible object model, and a
declarative style. Mike showed 10 lines of code with a checkbox
that controlled the visibility of a window, without having to attach
an event handler to the checkbox.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.openlaszlo.org/">http://www.openlaszlo.org/</a> has the 10 minute overview (explorer)
and many other demos including LZPIX, which Mike demoed.</li>
<li>The newest version of Laszlo has DHTML support that allows a flash
app to be served as DHTML instead, with little difference. Laszlo
gives you the power of one runtime that rises above browser
incompatibilities.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Laszlo on Rails</h2>
<ul>
<li>Install
# install laszlo
gem install ropenlaszlo
rails laszlo-app && cd laszlo-app
./script/plugin install svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/laszlo-plugin/tags/openlaszlo</li>
<li>More info at <a href="http://laszlo-plugin.rubyforge.org/">http://laszlo-plugin.rubyforge.org/</a></li>
</ul>
<h2>Pros & Cons</h2>
<ul>
<li>Pro: Rich possibilities
<ul>
<li>Blogbox – cross-site window</li>
<li>Publish and subscribe for chat and collaboration, event-driven
updates</li>
</ul></li>
<li>Pro: deep API</li>
<li>Pro: in-browser development, like Seaside</li>
<li>Con: Consumes resources</li>
<li>Con: Accessibility, printability and searchability are not its
strengths</li>
<li>Con: mature, yet requires experimentation</li>
<li>Con: performance can be an issue, especially on some older platforms</li>
</ul>
<p>Store it away – Laszlo is a promising technology, it’s free and open
source it’s here today, and it appears to be getting good at serving
standards-based interfaces. When combined with Rails’ increasing
support for RESTian interfaces, the task of building compatible,
dynamic applications should only get easier.</p>