Laszlo Releases Ajax Runtime, Webtop Software

Laszlo Systems this week released a new version of its rich application development environment that supports the development and delivery of Ajax and Flash applications from a single code base.

With Web applications, a development environment is only as good as the runtimes it supports. Laszlo applications have typically been targeted at Flash players. The new OpenLaszlo 4.0 release adds support for browser-centric Ajax environments, broadening the base of potential desktops that can run Laszlo-created apps.With version 4.0, developers can choose to run OpenLaszlo applications using either Flash or Ajax, or both.

Laszlo competes with development tools like Adobe's Flex, and it's new Apollo development tool, which was released into alpha this week.

Downloads and live demonstrations of OpenLaszlo 4.0 applications, along with their source code, are available at www.openlaszlo.org.

Also this week, Laszlo released Laszlo Webtop, a user interface for running Laszlo applications. The Webtop includes support for single sign-on, built-in windowing and docking and drag-and-drop data sharing. The software product creates an environment for rich Internet applications that combines the advantages of Web browsers and traditional desktop applications, Laszlo said.

The Webtop software also includes a Java-based server that enables integration of Web Services and helps Laszlo applications work within a service-oriented architecture (SOA) environment.