[Laszlo-dev] Relevance of SWF8 runtime for OL 5.0 / support of Flash 10?

[Rami Ojares / AMG]

Sebastian is right of course.
But now we should find out what the laszlo folks think about this issue.
Further is there a man in laszlosystems who calls the shots?
Or do they also live in the modern matrix organisation.

- rami


> I think folks at laszlo should do whatever fits into their products 
> best. Best for the project will be if a healthy company standing 
> behind it and supporting the development. After all a big community is 
> nice but the number of users who will ever do the step from a user to 
> contributer that adds significant changes to the core is very little. 
> So in general big communities are good for getting you a job but a big 
> part of improvements and contributions are done by the one's that are 
> paid to work at laszlo.
>
>
> sebastian
>
>
> 2009/9/8 Raju Bitter <rajubitter at me.com <mailto:rajubitter at me.com>>
>
>     Thanks for the feedback, Sebastian! I get your point. The other
>     side of the story is, that all the goodies you have with Flash 10
>     are not integrated into OpenLaszlo (3d transform, new text layout
>     engine, drawing API, color correction). If there is solid support
>     for the new text layout features only, that would really enhance
>     the SWF runtime!
>
>     It comes down to the decision if you want to innovate by adopting
>     new features supported in Flash 9/10, or by trying to support an -
>     in my eyes - out-dated version of Flash. Flash Player 8 final was
>     released in 2005, that's a long time ago! The next big thing for
>     Flash is going to be Flash 10 on Android, webOS and Windows
>     Mobile. Should OpenLaszlo try to jump onto that train, for the
>     first time making the SWFx runtime an interesting option for
>     mobile apps? In the end the Laszlo folks will have to make the
>     decision, but I have the feeling that the platform is falling
>     behind other RIA technologies innovation-wise. To me OpenLaszlo is
>     only interesting if I see that there's enough innovation in the
>     platform. I've shown with a few demos what can be done with the
>     DHTML runtime, a bit of HTML 5 or CSS 2/3 support. Some of these
>     features could be matched in the SWF runtime with better Flash 10
>     support, and I think that would be a powerful combination.
>
>     Other RIA technologies have better tool support,  better
>     documentation and much larger communities = more paid project
>     work!!! That can be countered by having an interesting feature
>     set. I don't want to raise the discussion again, but if you look
>     at the response to release announcements and the activity in the
>     forums/mailing lists, the community is tiny compared to what it
>     was like in 2005/2006.
>
>     Again, I'd be happy to hear what other community members think.
>
>     - Raju
>
>      
>     On Sep 8, 2009, at 8:35 AM, Sebastian Wagner wrote:
>
>>     I think if you do that a lot of folks have their *old* apps and
>>     are forced to sit some weeks in their office trying to shift it
>>     to AS3, stay with the old platform or find another solution.
>>
>>
>>
>>     sebastian
>>
>>     2009/9/8 Raju Bitter <rajubitter at me.com <mailto:rajubitter at me.com>>
>>
>>         Hm, no answer? Is that something you don't want to discuss
>>         with the community?
>>
>>         On Aug 31, 2009, at 1:05 AM, Raju Bitter wrote:
>>
>>>         Do you still plan to support SWF8 with OL 5.0? I believe
>>>         that OL needs to shift the focus to DHTML/HTML5 and Flash 10
>>>         instead. Flash 8 is just out-dated by now, and I cannot
>>>         imagine good use for the runtime. According to Adobe, Flash
>>>         10 is installed on nearly 87% of Internet-connected desktop
>>>         computers by now:
>>>         http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatform/2009/07/welcome-to-the-flash-platform.html
>>>
>>>         The new Flash 10 features are much more interesting for
>>>         OpenLaszlo than continued SWF8 support, especially things
>>>         like the improved text engine and 3d functionality.
>>>
>>>         Flash 10 and mobile: Adobe announced a beta version of Flash
>>>         10 player for Android, Palm Pre and other phones for October
>>>         (Max 2009). For some time SFW8 was still an option for Flash
>>>         Lite 2.1 or 3.0 - although I don't know of any deployed
>>>         application, but that will change with the release of Flash
>>>         10 player for mobile devices.
>>>
>>>         I know that Laszlo still uses SWF8 for Webtop, but it will
>>>         only be a matter of time until that's not needed any more.
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>     -- 
>>     Sebastian Wagner
>>     http://www.webbase-design.de <http://www.webbase-design.de/>
>>     http://openmeetings.googlecode.com
>>     <http://openmeetings.googlecode.com/>
>>     http://www.laszlo-forum.de <http://www.laszlo-forum.de/>
>>     seba.wagner at gmail.com <mailto:seba.wagner at gmail.com>
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Sebastian Wagner
> http://www.webbase-design.de
> http://openmeetings.googlecode.com
> http://www.laszlo-forum.de
> seba.wagner at gmail.com <mailto:seba.wagner at gmail.com>