John Reynolds's Blog

Faces and Flash?

I haven't had time to delve into the details, but my impression is that they're "filling in" some of the missing Rich Internet Application pieces that I've wanted for a long time.

My professional introduction to Java was through Applets and JSP pages. I needed browser components that were "snazzy" and "dynamic". In my case I needed to display a dynamically updating network topology as part of a browser-based management console for an InfiniBand network.

Creating an applet/servlet pair to display the network topology was really quite simple due to the beta release of Gaudenz Alder's wonderful JGraph and a newly minted web application framework from Apache that was called "Struts".

The difficult part of this project was bridging the gap between our applets and "standard" JSP components and pages. Applet to applet communication and Applet to servlet (JSP) communication required some judicious tweaking.

Many times during the project we questioned the sanity of our decision to mix and match... we should have stuck to straight JSP, or we should have built one big monolithic applet (Java Web Start made its debut after this project was already well underway). Fortunately, the result was a pretty nifty web application... kind of ugly under-the-covers, but it worked well. Sadly, InfiniBand tubed and I got to collect unemployment.

But I digress...

IBM's Faces for Laszlo seems to be solving a problem very similar to the one that I faced when trying to blend applets and JSP pages with Struts. Faces for Laszlo provides server-side plumbing to ease the creation of web applications that combine Flash components and JSF components.

"How does it work?

Through a JSF custom tag library, developers using Faces for Laszlo can integrate OpenLaszlo components into their Web applications. These components can bind to server-side data that is made available as JavaScript data structures within the browser at run time. Any changes to this client-side data representation are immediately reflected by all subscribed OpenLaszlo and DHTML components."

Coupled with Eclipse IDE support, this "Flash and Faces" technology might be a very interesting technology to look into.

Now if I can just find something similar for "Applets and Faces", my life will be complete ;-)

Comments

• unless the Lazlo solution can offer 'web start' capabilities to the desktop, I don't see a reason to pursue it when you can already do really neat stuff like this: http://script.aculo.us/.

  There are many of us that have to comply with web standards and accessibility of information. With XHTML and JS solutions with JSF, accessibility isn't an issue. I would be interested to hear what IBM's doing to handle those regulations with Lazlo.

  btw, the movie, "Real Genius" is the best movie in the world :-)

  Posted by: jhook on July 22, 2005 at 08:55 AM

• Laszlo Weather
  vs.
  Rico Weather

  Posted by: jhook on July 22, 2005 at 09:33 AM

• Thanks for the movie tip. I will definitely check it out.

  Hmmm... Rico Weather cetainly does seem to launch faster.

  On the other hand, http://script.aculo.us/ crashed my browser (IE 6). I'll try it later with FireFox.

  What interests me most about Faces/Flash is the coordinated use of disparate technologies. In an ideal world the Benevolent Despot(TM) would have mandated a better solution. Unfortuntately we're stuck with something a bit less than the ideal.

  --John

  Posted by: johnreynolds on July 22, 2005 at 10:27 AM

• I feel that the web has been too quick to drop Applets and adopt Flash.
  The period of Applets having to work with Java 1.0 is long over, which in my view killed them quick. I am trying to breath new life into applets on my website videowebworks.com... Its time for new tools to give the average web designer the ability to put really kick-ass Applets on their web pages again.

  Posted by: jonallen on July 25, 2005 at 12:50 PM

• my life not.... hehehe, ok yes, a little more. -Paul

  Posted by: paul1 on July 26, 2005 at 04:55 AM

• Applets and JavaScriptI found a great tutorial on how to invoke JavaScript from an Applet and visa-versa at Site With The LAMP. Perhaps these techniques could be the basis for "Applets/Flash/Faces".

  --John

  Posted by: johnreynolds on July 26, 2005 at 09:26 AM

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