As far as I know, the Laszlo engine works in the server side by compiling the UI definition XML into Flash or DHTML/JavaScript objects. To run an applet you need the whole JVM in the client. With Laszlo (and Flex) the only VM required is Flash player, a de facto standard.

I agree with you about the JS generated by GWT, it looks like garbage to me and it’s a negative point for GWT. On the other hand, I prefer to define the UI in Swing-style instead of XML. But for tastes there are colors

Here’s what Gartner had to say about Laszlo, which was listes as one of the “Cool Vendors in Application Development 2007″:

“OpenLaszlo is cool because it is the only RIA platform in which developers can define the user
interface in a declarative (nonprocedural) manner and target different runtime environments,
including Ajax, Flash and Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition (Java for mobile devices). Although
many vendors are using a declarative XML representation for the interface (including Adobe,
Microsoft and Nexaweb), no other vendor enables this XML to be rendered to as many different
runtimes.”

The XML + EcmaScript approach is a very modern approach of interface development. Many of the best Ajax Toolkits followed the approach of OpenLaszlo and came up with similar concepts, not to forget Adobe and Microsoft here. I’ve been building Laszlo applications very effectively with OpenLaszlo and never ran into any problems. I don’t think Java is the one language we should use for everything connected to programming. There a better and more modern concepts evolving, but of course everyone is free to chose.

It’s a matter of preference and different tools are better for doing different tasks. Although it’s certainly possible, I wouldn’t use Java to build something that can be done more easily with 2 lines sh script. I also wouldn’t write a shell script to handle my company’s business logic. I find it much more fun and faster to develop web apps using OpenLaszlo’s LZX than working with lower-level languages like Java. Perhaps I’ve “taken enough drugs”?

Regarding the RESTian nature of Laszlo apps - Admitedly, bookmarking is a tricky thing to do in a non page-based AJAX applications. Because most Laszlo apps are not page-based, it’s tough to generalize a solution. The Laszlo apps that I build consume REST services and a few of them are deep-linkable. Maybe I’ll post a bit of sample code so it’s easier to make more RESTafarian web apps.

Laszlo’s been open source for over 2 years and can now target different runtimes - currently DHTML/AJAX and the Flash player. JavaME compiler is in progress. Adobe made a smart move by open-sourcing Flex.

Robb showed off our fancy new stuff first and probably should have started with a HelloWorld! app. Here’s one — <canvas><text>Hello World!</text></canvas>