OpenLaszlo 4.9.0 (Recommended Release for SWF8, SWF10, and DHTML Development)

OpenLaszlo 4.9.0 is a significant release along the path to OpenLaszlo 5.0, which is the upcoming release with newly redesigned components. OpenLaszlo 4.9.0 contains over 160 bug fixes and implements the infrastructure to support the new components. It also provides new features for creating and deploying mobile applications. See the OpenLaszlo release notes in JIRA for details. OpenLaszlo 4.9.0 is the recommended platform for all application development in the SWF8, SWF10, and DHTML runtimes.

For those of you who have already upgraded your applications to OpenLaszlo 4.2 or higher, no further work is needed. You should just start using OpenLaszlo 4.9.0. However, if your application is based on an older version of OpenLaszlo, then you must modify your code to take advantage of the SWF9/10 performance gains and to meet the much stronger typing requirements that it mandates.

To migrate your 4.0.X or 4.1.1 applications, we strongly suggest that you refer to this wiki page: Runtime_Differences. This page discusses the changes required by SWF9 and also provides a methodology and conversion scripts to assist you in upgrading your application. It is very important that you run the automated conversion scripts in the recommended order, should you choose to take advantage of them.

Software Packaging Information

OpenLaszlo software is available for download in the following configurations. (Versions of the OpenLaszlo platform prior to OpenLaszlo 3.0 were called the Laszlo Presentation Server or LPS.)

• Development Kits for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Unix: These packages are binary distributions with installers for specific platforms and include the Tomcat 5.0.24 servlet container. Development kits also include the documentation, sample code, demonstrations, and Laszlo in 10 minutes tutorial code.
• Development Kit for Any OS: This package is a development kit without the Tomcat servlet container. Choose this package if you wish to deploy OpenLaszlo into an existing Java Application Server or in your own servlet container, such as IBM WebSphere or JBoss.
• Servlet Only: This package contains only the servlet, the smallest set of files required to deploy an OpenLaszlo application on any OS running Java. If you want a local copy of the documentation, including live examples, you should download one of the OS-specific development distributions. When you are ready to deploy, you can do so using the servlet distribution.
• Source Code Distribution: This package provides all of the source code, docs, examples, and supporting collateral necessary to build OpenLaszlo. Use this distribution to extend OpenLaszlo, customize it for your application, and to contribute to the OpenLaszlo project.
  
  

OpenLaszlo (and previous LPS release versions 2.2 or higher) are released under the Common Public License (Version 1.0). The third party software components that are distributed with OpenLaszlo (and LPS) are released under their own license terms and conditions.

System Requirements for OpenLaszlo

Client Requirements

OpenLaszlo 4.2 has been fully tested and is supported with these browser/platform combinations:

• Windows XP/Internet Explorer 7 -- Flash 8, Flash 9, and DHTML
• Windows XP/Internet Firefox 3 -- Flash 8, Flash 9, and DHTML
• Linux 2.6 kernel Firefox 3 -- Flash 8, Flash 9, and DHTML
• Mac OS X Firefox 3 -- Flash 8, Flash 9, and DHTML
• Mac OS X Safari 3 -- Flash 8, Flash 9, and DHTML

OpenLaszlo has been tested on Windows Vista but is not fully qualified on that release. Please see the OpenLaszlo 4.2 Release Notes for more information on running the OpenLaszlo Server on Vista.

Minimum support for DHTML with browsers require support for ECMAScript v3, DOM Level 2, and CSS 2.1.

These browser/platform combinations have not been tested with OpenLaszlo and are not supported, but we believe they should work properly under normal circumstances:

• Flash 7
• Flash 10 -- OpenLaszlo should work with the Flash 10 for Flash 8 or Flash 9 compiled applications. Support for Flash 10 features are not currently supported
• Firefox releases prior to Firefox 3
• Safari releases prior to Safari 3
• Internet Explorer 6
• Internet Explorer 8, Mozilla nightly, Webkit nightly -- we do not formally test and qualify beta and development releases
• Opera releases 8 and greater

These browser/platform combinations are not supported:

• Flash versions 6 and before
• Opera versions 7 and before
• Internet Explorer versions 5 and before

For OpenLaszlo versions prior to release 4.2, please see the release notes supplied with the release for compatibility information.

Server Requirements

We recommend use of the servers for development purposes only. Our recommendation is that all OpenLaszlo applications be compiled in SOLO mode for deployment and can be deployed on any web server in that configuration.

OpenLaszlo is 100% pure Java and runs in server environments that provide:

• Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 1.5 or greater. Note that the OpenLaszlo Developer Kit requires the Java SDK, since Jakarta Tomcat, the servlet container that ships with it, needs the Java SDK.
• A Java Servlet container supporting at least version 2.2 of the Java Servlet Specification. This is only required for OpenLaszlo Core. OpenLaszlo Developer Kit ships with Tomcat 5.0.24.