AJAX and Flash Development with OpenLaszlo: A Tutorial (A Tutorial series) [Paperback]

Chris Coremans (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 20, 2006 | Series: A Tutorial series

Introducing developers to OpenLaszlo—a new technology for developing Flash that is based on XML and JavaScript—this guide provides developers with all the information about this free and open-source tool, including how to code within the OpenLaszlo development environment and the OpenLaszlo development suite as it applies to rapid development time. How and why OpenLaszlo is used and supported by industry leaders such as IBM and Yahoo! is also discussed.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Chris Coremans is a senior Java Web developer for Torex Mutual.

Product Details

• Paperback: 350 pages
• Publisher: BrainySoftware (August 20, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0975212869
• ISBN-13: 978-0975212868
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,218,406 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Note quite what I expected, September 7, 2006

By 

Thomas (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: AJAX and Flash Development with OpenLaszlo: A Tutorial (A Tutorial series) (Paperback)

The online documentation for openlaszo is very good, especially the interactive examples, where you can try out what you just learnt. I spent quite some time reading tutorials and writing some of my own laszlo code.

The reason I bought this book, is because I expected to get a deeper understanding on openlaszlo, and an easier to follow description of more advanced concepts, than the one provided on the online documentation.

I got the book about an hour ago, I browsed thru it, but I have to say I am disappointed: off the 300+ pages about a half are API's, which you can get online easily. The page numbers on the Table of contents are messed up: All references from Chap 11 thru the index are page 197 ! (Please next time: somebody look at the table of contents before printing the book !

If you did not look into openlaszo yet, and you are just interested in how you can make great looking UI's using open source technologies, I still think this book is worth reading, but if you already spend a fair amount reading thru the online docu, this book is probably not for you.

Actually, the book says it is a tutorial .. probably I just need to wait for a reference book, so I still give it three stars.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Just a poor rewrite of the free online documentation, December 20, 2006

By 

CG - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: AJAX and Flash Development with OpenLaszlo: A Tutorial (A Tutorial series) (Paperback)

The online documentation for Laszlo is pretty good, and has the advantage of interactive examples. But there are a huge number of tricks and undocumented details that can be very frustrating to figure out. My hope was that this book would help in those areas. Unfortunately this was not the case.

As others have mentioned, this book is just a rewrite of the online reference manual, and not a very good one at that. In most cases the online docs are more complete and easier to follow. The "A Tutorial" subtitle is not accurate, as the book is almost entirely reference material. Only the two pretty good appendixes on XML and JavaScript basics are anything resembling a tutorial.

Unfortunately, errors in the book make it more of a liability than an advantage to own this book. The inaccurate contents, index, and typesetting errors are mostly just annoying, but it is shocking a publisher would let such blantant errors get through. Far more problematic for a professional programmer are the errors in the content. We thought we had actually found some valuable information in the book regarding working with data, that was not in the online documentation. After wasting a day of programming, we discovered the reason the feature wasn't in the online docs is that it was never in Laszlo to start with.

I strongly recommend sticking with the online documentation, user forums, etc. and not bother with this book.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This is the worst technical book I ever had, November 13, 2006

By 

Michael (Tamap, FL, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: AJAX and Flash Development with OpenLaszlo: A Tutorial (A Tutorial series) (Paperback)

I ordered this book using 2nd day shipping. I need to evaluate whether openlaszlo is a replacement for flex. I am not expecting a lot except that I can get a little bit more than the online documentation.

The books is just a reprint of online documentation. Each chapter just reprints the tag/attributes/methods. The examples the author gives are so simple that they don't teach me anything more than the documentation.

Then finally comes the last chapter that teaches how to integrate google map. The author thanks to Manabu Togawa for allowing him to reprint it on the book. He did just reprint the code and didn't give any explanation of the code.

The only thing intuitive I found in this book is the appendix A: Introduction to XML and appendix B:Introduction to JavaScript. If you don't know these two, you may want to buy this book?

I doubt that author has done anything in OpenLaszlo himself.