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.