Laszlo is about XML, not about Flash

I know I have talked already about Laszlo, but I should say this article caught me. “Laszlo is XML technology, not Flash technology” by David Temkin that explains how the Laszlo XUL server toolkit differs from Macromedia’s XUL server offering (aka Flex/MXML).

David asks which one is your choice?
Macromedia’s MXML which is tightly bound only to the Flash player and authoring tool?.
Microsoft’s upcoming XAML, which is tightly bound to Microsoft’s Avalon/WinFX client framework?
Or Laszlo’s XML language and framework which is self-contained (no need to use ActionScript APIs, Flash MX, C#, “code behind,” or any other external language) and designed expressly for development of rich interactivity to deliver this application into Macromedia (Flash), Microsoft (Longhorn/Avalon), and Java/J2ME runtimes or anyother powerful client that may arise in future.

David is the CTO of Laszlo Systems so don’t expect a fair and balanced story. Full story here.

What’s your take on it? Do server-side XUL toolkits have a future?

Flex and .Net

For those who are watching the flexcoders mailing list, this information maybe a repitition. For all others, Something to note is that some .NET web services are written with multiple outputs. The one I recently saw had a WSDL signature like this:

<message name=”Login”>
<part name=”UserId” type=”xsd:string” />
<part name=”Password” type=”xsd:string” />
<part name=”TokenResponse” type=”xsd:anyType” />
</message>
<message name=”LoginResponse”>
<part name=”Result” type=”xsd:int” />
<part name=”TokenResponse” type=”xsd:anyType” />
</message>

In this case there are two “outputs”, Result and TokenResponse. Unfortunately the Flex WebService library does not deserialize multiple outputs correctly, so only the contents of Result end up getting deserialized. If you want to use a service like this you’ll need to set resultFormat=”xml” on your operation tag and handle the parsing of the XML yourself.

Macromedia Team will be looking into fixes for this in a future version.

Flex released today

Macromedia released Flex today, the biggest bet of the family. Flex is the enterprise level presentation server that generates SWF to the Flash player through MXML, same as HTML gets rendered by browser. Flex has the biggest product team and has had the longest development cyle of any Macromedia product that I am aware of.
With the release of Flex, Macromedia takes its first step to tussle with Microsoft’s Longhorn.
Hear about Flex technology from these places for an introduction if you are new to Flex.
1. Browse through the OnDemand Seminars for Flex introduction, you will find a good intro on Flex technology.
2. Breeze presentation gives you the overview and demo of the Flex product.

Save your Flash Workspace Settings

I was just reading this tip from MX Traveller and couldn’t resist from posting this info.
If you are backing up your Windows system and looking to save the settings and data of Dreamweaver, Flash and Contribute, look no further.
There is a nice little software called MM Exporter.
It saves all program settings, all Site-Definitions separately at one time the “Configuration” folder backup an arbitrary, user defined folder Serial numbers of almost every MM program into a text file and/or alternatively all configuration data and entire settings from win registry. You can also quickly restore your workspace after a crash or change of system.