Ted Patrick > { Events & Community } > Adobe Systems

It is interesting that most of the features of Laszlo Presentation Server can be accomplished client-side with the v6 Flash Player! This was essentially the same "death blow" that ended Generator as a product. I'm surprised Laszlo made the same mistake.

Hopefully MM will avoid this error with Royale. MM tends to learn from their mistakes. Obviously Central will be infinitely better because of ShockMachine, even though SM is dead and gone.

Laszlo is a server-side component toolkit for creating swf applications. You define applications in XML and the server complies server-side authortime components into one big swf when an application is called. The "One Big Swf" approach implies that there is very little client-side runtime component reuse. Although, you should be able to extend Laszlo to support it. Laszlo provides an nice development paradigm for writing component based applications via XML. Each tag represents a component with properties/events and components can be infinitely nested.

Authortime components tend to lock a developer into using a particular development methodology. Lets fact it, FUI Components were designed to lock us into using the Flash MX IDE and Laszlo's components lock us into using their server. This is ok if you "LOVE" the development methodology but is not ok if you want flexibility. Although subtle in its presentation, marketing, and use, authortime component create an addiction. I must add, in all fairness, that authortime components make things easy on the developer by providing a component specific interface while authoring. Although there is no reason one cannot merge these two extremes and provide an authortime interface for using runtime components. Actually, this is the purpose of Branden's Outlet component and the design-time libraries of PowerSDK.

Runtime components allow you to reuse a common component across many applications without requiring the client (Browser/Player/Central) to download it again and again. At authortime you specify where, when and how you want a component to appear and at runtime the component is imported and displayed as needed. Although difficult to set-up initially, this technique allows you to use components across many applications on a common domain regardless of how they are originally authored (Laszlo, FlashIDE, Royale, etc..).

After all, the Flash Player is a component framework itself. Allowing a swf to load a swf into itself is the ultimate form of component reuse. This will always be one of the best features of the Flash Player. When it was added in version 3, it simply changed everything.

Thoughts and comments always welcome.

Cheers,

ted ;)