Laszlo in Action [Paperback]

Norman Klein (Author), Max Carlson (Author), Glenn MacEwen (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1932394834 | ISBN-13: 978-1932394832 | Publication Date: February 1, 2008

Laszlo in Action is the first comprehensive guide to the Laszlo system and its language LZX. OpenLaszlo is an increasingly popular open-source platform for the development and delivery of rich internet applications across multiple platforms: Flash, DHTML, and J2ME. The dramatic emergence of Ajax over the past year was a first step in the transition from page-oriented HTML web applications towards more full-featured rich internet applications. OpenLaszlo provides another important step in this continuing evolutionary process through the increased productivity resulting from LZX's declarative approach. It provides developers with the tools to create web-based applications offering the usability and interactivity associated with desktop applications, and the low costs associated with web-based deployment. The cross-platform nature of Laszlo LZX applications allows source code with only minimum modifications to run natively on all popular web browsers, on all desktop operating systems, on the Flash platform, and other platforms in the future.

Written to address the needs of a wide spectrum of developers, ranging from client-side HTML and JavaScript developers all the way to enterprise-class Java or Rails engineers, this book provides a very hands-on approach towards building applications that solve real-world problems across both the Flash and DHTML platforms. Starting with the fundamentals of Laszlo LZX, the authors quickly move towards applying this knowledge to the design and development of a full-scale application called the Laszlo Market. This provides a working context to assist understanding the underlying concepts of Laszlo LZX and, more importantly, how to apply this knowledge in innovative ways. The construction of the Laszlo Market proceeds over the course of the book illustrating topics starting with an initial wireframe and storyboard design to optimization issues dealing with the application's deployment across the Flash and DHTML platforms.

Product Details

• Paperback: 550 pages
• Publisher: Manning Publications (February 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932394834
• ISBN-13: 978-1932394832
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,294,176 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent introduction, February 19, 2008

By 

wibe "wibe" (Erlangen. germany) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Laszlo in Action (Paperback)

This book is an excellent introduction to OpenLaszlo version 4.0. It describes the OpenLaszlo framework, its concepts and unfolds the language philosophy over several chapters by creating a webshop application. One major aspect of OpenLaszlo is, to initially define the visual GUI mockup using some embedded XML test data inside the OpenLaszlo frontend. After finishing the visual GUI, you switch the XML source to a server address and off you go ! So, web applications can be visually created in a very simple and appealing way using a XML markup language and small XML test data - no need to fiddle around on server or database side. After finishing the visual work, a backend programmer can do the database creation and webservice part of the application. Frontend and backend development are no longer a mixed operation - web 2.0 applications in record time. Note: OpenLaszlo was already on the market in 2002, when Adobe (formerly Macromedia) stole that idea and created Flex. OpenLaszlo is OpenSource and it rocks !

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Missing Appendices, May 13, 2008

By 

J. Thorson - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Laszlo in Action (Paperback)

Laszlo in Action is an 'ok' introduction to OpenLaszlo. I found it mildly informative, however, it lacks any backend information. Notably, how do you get your data from the database to OpenLaszlo. The publisher tells us that there are two appendices that describe backends for Java Struts and Ruby on Rails to transport data between a database and OpenLaszlo but those appendices are not actually in the book. They're download only PDFs from the publisher's website. Had I known this before purchasing the book I would have skipped buying it. I don't know why the publisher decided not to actually print the appendices but I call it an epic fail on their part.

Save your money. Download the appendices from the publisher and use OpenLaszlo's online documentation.

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book, September 20, 2009

By 

Douglas Alberto Lopez "Douglas Lopez" (Caracas, Venezuela) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Laszlo in Action (Paperback)

After reading the Openlaszlo official documentation at
[...], I had many doubts that did not allow me to develop any system. Furthermore it did not allow me to use the best practices, tools and other features correctly to develop in Laszlo.

I was looking at forums all over the world and found that almost everybody has the same doubts that I had.

I visited the place [...] which is far better than the original documentation at [...].

It helped me a lot but unfortunately this documentation is incomplete; it is still in progress.

Then I was looking for a book in Openlaszlo. I visited AMAZON and found two books
in OpenLaszlo; however the people comments on these two books were not too good. Maybe they knew more that I did.

So, I took the risk to purchase Laszlo in Action. I started reading immediately. To my surprise, this book is EXCELENT.

It clarifies a lot of doubts. It seems to be written by authors that know a lot
about compilers, computer language construction, automata theory,
mathematical background, etc.

Sometimes the book is not easy to digest but with the background that I had by reading many articles and documentation, it was not too hard to follow.

So, I recommend this book for all people that want to build real system by using
Openlaszlo. The book develops a Laszlo Market real system from A to Z for us to understand better how the Laszlo tools can be used for making a good and efficient real system, including design features, better practices and performance and tuning issues.