Still curious about Zorn
It looks like Macromedia is going to show off the current state of Zorn at their "MAX" conference. Zorn is supposed to be an Eclipse-based IDE for ActionScript and MXML - the languages of Flex. Flex compiles those languages into .swf files, which run in the Flash player. I'm really curious to see how good the visual design portion of Zorn turns out to be. I've briefly watched someone work with the Flex builder, Macromedia's current Flex IDE, and I thought it was cool. It allows you to "drag and drop" different Flex components into the central application development area.
I'm buiding the UI of my web-based Project Management application, Ataraxis Unity™, with OpenLaszlo. Nothing will change that now. But I'm disappointed in the tool support. I was using the "IDE for Laszlo" when I first started working with OpenLaszlo, and it was rather crude. It's since been updated, and has gotten better. But it's not the visual development environment I'm looking for. The way it does "drag and drop" is pretty goofy.
In the IDE for Laszlo you've got 2 views for your code files, "Source" and "Design", along with a "Palette" of Laszlo components.
Source is what you expect - it's the source code. "Design" isn't quite what you'd think. You drag components from the "Palette" and drop them into your source code in the "Source" view and the XML is written out for you. Yes, that's correct. You are dragging a component into an XML file, not the "Design" view. Now if you click on the "Design" tab, you'll see a rendered version of your source code. That's cool and all, but it would be more useful if I could drag the components onto the "Design" view. The IDE for Laszlo is still pretty young, and I'm sure it will get better over time.
If Zorn is a sub $500 tool, I'd like to evaluate it for future products. (I've got a bunch in mind. :) )
I'm buiding the UI of my web-based Project Management application, Ataraxis Unity™, with OpenLaszlo. Nothing will change that now. But I'm disappointed in the tool support. I was using the "IDE for Laszlo" when I first started working with OpenLaszlo, and it was rather crude. It's since been updated, and has gotten better. But it's not the visual development environment I'm looking for. The way it does "drag and drop" is pretty goofy.
In the IDE for Laszlo you've got 2 views for your code files, "Source" and "Design", along with a "Palette" of Laszlo components.
Source is what you expect - it's the source code. "Design" isn't quite what you'd think. You drag components from the "Palette" and drop them into your source code in the "Source" view and the XML is written out for you. Yes, that's correct. You are dragging a component into an XML file, not the "Design" view. Now if you click on the "Design" tab, you'll see a rendered version of your source code. That's cool and all, but it would be more useful if I could drag the components onto the "Design" view. The IDE for Laszlo is still pretty young, and I'm sure it will get better over time.
If Zorn is a sub $500 tool, I'd like to evaluate it for future products. (I've got a bunch in mind. :) )
posted by Michael Sica at
5:45 PM
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