title: Is OpenLaszlo's dual-runtime approach (HTML5 and Flash/SWF) still valid?
body: <p>OpenLaszlo is - as far as I know - the only rich Internet application platform with the following features:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Declarative XML based user interface language (similar to Mozilla's XUL) called LZX.</li>
  <li>Cross compilation of LZX to either JavaScript or ActionScript 3 (therefore supporting two runtimes).</li>
  <li>Ability to develop components using XML and JavaScript or JavaScript only; all components are rendered by OpenLaszlo, therefore they'll look identical across browsers and devices.</li>
  <li>View system, keyboard and mouse management working across runtimes.</li>
  <li>Component can be written in LZX (XML + JavaScript), or in a JavaScript only</li>
  <li>XML datasets supporting XPath based mapping of components to dataset elements.</li>
  <li>Layout engine supporting a number of pre-defined layouts; developers can easily implement custom layouts.</li>
  <li>Powerful support for constraints using a simple syntax in XML attributes: $once{JavaScript expression} or $always{JavaScript expression}.</li>
  <li>Built-in debugger (developer console) working in both runtimes.</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>I haven't seen any more modern JavaScript framework which makes it as easy as OpenLaszlo to create HTML5 applications - with the only downside that the current component set delivered with OpenLaszlo looks a bit like Mac OS back in the 90's.</p>
  
  <p>But how valid is the approach of deploying an application as both HTML5/JavaScript application and as an Adobe Flash application (with the option of creating an Adobe AIR based mobile application, although that functionality is not build into the OpenLaszlo server directly)? I heard that Adobe tried to do something similar with the FalconJS compiler prototype (see this <a href="http://tv.adobe.com/watch/flex-community-summit-december-2011/open-discussion-about-falcon-and-falconjs/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Adobe video Open Discussion about Falcon and FalconJS</a> for more information), but they stopped the effort. The code of the FalconJS proof-of-concept will be contributed to the Apache Foundation as part of the Apache Flex project, but </p>
  
  <p>It is surprising to see that there is not a single application utilizing both runtimes in the OpenLaszlo showcase section: <a href="http://www.openlaszlo.org/showcase" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.openlaszlo.org/showcase</a></p>
  
  <p>In an <a href="http://ajaxian.com/archives/laszlo-webtop" rel="nofollow noreferrer">old Ajaxian article from 2007</a> I read that Laszlo Webtop's "final release will support OpenLaszlo 4, which will mean support for both Ajax and Flash applications". But the Laszlo Webtop demo site <a href="http://gowebtop.com/webtop/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://gowebtop.com/webtop/</a> has only a Flash based version of Webtop. I've read in <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12089808/which-openlaszlo-version-should-i-use-for-new-projects-and-when-migrating-applic">this Stackoverflow discussion</a> that <a href="http://www.gliffy.com" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Gliffy</a> - one of the most impressive OpenLaszlo applications I know - has been rebuilt using JavaScript, not utilizing the dual-runtime capability of OpenLaszlo.</p>
  
  <p>Are there any other large OpenLaszlo applications deployed as both HTML5/DHTML and Flash, which are maybe not listed on the OpenLaszlo.org website? Even if Flash is not that popular any more, it is still a relevant technology for a number of use cases (audio conferencing, 3d in the browser, GPU accelerated video playback, etc.).</p>