February 02, 2007
Laszlo Webtop: A preview
Today Laszlo Systems is unveiling Laszlo Webtop, a commercial product that enables the delivery of multiple windowed applications in any browser. You can think of it as a framework for creating and delivering a browser-based "desktop" or "WebOS" experience, in which each application is written using OpenLaszlo. Laszlo Webtop provides the overall user interface, the glue to integrate the applications, and the server pieces that make it possible to integrate existing data and services into a seamless Web-based desktop, or webtop.
Laszlo Webtop is not a hosted end-user service like other "WebOS" offerings. Like Laszlo Mail, Laszlo Webtop is licensable commercial software that is built on top of OpenLaszlo. On the one hand it is an application, with a user interface; on the other hand, it is extensible using OpenLaszlo on the client and Java and/or web services on the server, and provides a wide range of APIs to enable an integrated Webtop experience with good performance. It's Enterprise Software, with a capital "E" and a capital "S" — meaning that if you're an individual developer working on a quick project, it's probably out of your price range. On the other hand, if you're at a company that is building a multi-window, multi-function portal with OpenLaszlo — and we see a lot of these, across many market segments — it could be just the ticket to save you time and money, and deliver an exceptional end-result for your users.
The genesis of the product relates to Laszlo Mail. As you may know, Laszlo Mail is a commercially licensed mail application that is mainly targeted at ISPs and other communication providers. We found, in the process of selling Laszlo Mail, that many customers want to extend Laszlo Mail and add their own unique application functionality to it. They expect to be able to do this via OpenLaszlo — but in fact, today's Laszlo Mail, while configurable, is not extensible with developer code.
Laszlo Webtop is a solution to this problem, among others. It can embed multiple, separately developed, OpenLaszlo applications, such as a bundled Contacts application and the forthcoming, Webtop-aware Laszlo Mail. Applications can be integrated on the client and the server with developer-written applications that take advantage of Laszlo Webtop APIs and services. But Laszlo Webtop isn't limited to communication applications; we expect to see many applications delivered using Laszlo Webtop in areas that include financial applications, business intelligence, social networks, and more. There is a lot of infrastructure provided by Laszlo Webtop beyond the windowed UI, including advanced data APIs that span the client and the server, single-sign on integration for disparate back-end services and applications, and so on.
The initial release of Laszlo Webtop is built on top of OpenLaszlo 3.4; future revisions will be built on top of OpenLaszlo 4, and will support both Flash and Ajax delivery options. Note that applications delivered with Laszlo Webtop are on-line, hosted applications: this is not a solution for delivering native desktop applications. Instead, it is a solution for delivering a hosted desktop.
Prior to the product launch in March, developers and partners are invited to apply to the Laszlo Webtop Early Access Program. We'll be talking more about the detailed features of Laszlo Webtop when the product is launched, but if you are interested to start working with the product now, I'd encourage you to apply to the program here.