E-Scribe News : a programmer’s blog

About Me

PBX My name is Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using as much open source software as possible. From September to June I teach web design and other important non-photographic professional skills to photographers. In the '90s I wrote technology commentary and reviews for magazines, newspapers, and web publications, including Wired, Salon.com, FamilyPC, the late lamented Web Review, and the Chicago Tribune. Feel free to email me.

Book Project

I'm co-authoring a book, "Python Web Development with Django", with Jeff Forcier and Wesley Chun. It will be published by Prentice Hall in July 2008, but is available for pre-ordering on Amazon now.

Colophon

This site is built on a fresh trunk checkout of Django, running on Python 2.5.1, served by Apache and mod_python. The database is SQLite. The operating system is FreeBSD, on a VPS hosted at Johncompanies.com. Comment-spam protection by Akismet. Vintage topo imagery from the Maptech archive.

Pile o'Tags

ajax apple blogs browsers business design django ebay fp fun google hardware haskell intellectual property iphone javascript linux media mobile open source os x oscon oscon2007 palm php programming python rails rants reading risks ruby site spam textmate the well tips vcs web development web frameworks webservers wmassdevs

Stuff I Use

Akismet, del.icio.us, Django, dpaste.com, Emacs, FreeBSD, Freenode, jQuery, LaunchBar, MacPorts, Markdown, Mercurial, OS X, Postfix, Python, SQLite, Subversion, TextMate, Trac, Ubuntu Linux, wmii

A Django site.
(Finally!)

Copyright 2008
by Paul Bissex
and E-Scribe New Media

Open Laszlo

I have to admit that I carry big shield of skepticism when I circulate exhibit halls. Luckily a fellow attendee tipped me off to OpenLaszlo, an extremely spiffy system for server-side, declarative generation of Flash content. What this means for somebody like me -- someone who, despite a lot of background in visual design, would really prefer to work directly with code -- is that very sweet Flash-based interfaces can be constructed via XML. Their XML dialect, LZX, impressed me with its elegance and (for XML) relative lack of verbosity. The generation code is Java, which you can either run live on your server or run offline to generate standalone .swf files. They offer a nifty playground/demo for you to check it out.

They're also looking at targeting different front-ends, including DHTML. Obviously that's a big project, but even if it's just a subset of functionality that could be very nice. There's nothing wrong with Flash if there's a fallback that doesn't require extra developer effort.

Usually when a client wants a whizzy Flash interface I try to talk them out of it for accessibility and maintenance reasons. But I'll be keeping Laszlo in my back pocket just in case one really insists.

Friday, August 5th, 2005
+ +

Post a comment

Comments use Markdown syntax. Your comment will not appear until approved, which may take a few hours or more. Spammers will be torpedoed.


(Will not be shared)

(Optional)