Community

If you're excited by OpenLaszlo, we invite you to get involved. If you'd like your name on a project like this, that you can point to and say "I did that!", here's what you can do.

Who Can Help?

Laszlo is a deep system with many layers, and there are many ways to contribute. Experienced JavaScript developers, as well as programmers just getting comfortable with JavaScript and HTML, will find it possible to write rich internet applications and contribute to the OpenLaszlo project.

What Can I Do?

Sponsorship: Whether you’re an individual developer or a corporation, you can donate funds to further OpenLaszlo’s growth. Contributions can be applied to buying hardware or general development. Examples include G.ho.st’s support of the ActionScript 3 code development (Flash 9), which is currently underway. Email donate@openlaszlo.org to request a purchase order or learn more.
Articles: How to do x in OpenLaszlo. How to make OpenLaszlo work with y. Post these on your site or send them to us, and we'll link to them from OpenLaszlo.org.
Blog about OpenLaszlo: Blog about cool tips and tricks you used in your OpenLaszlo application. Tell about your experience using OpenLaszlo. Don't forget to tag your entries with openlaszlo.
Present a Paper at a Conference or Users Group Meeting: Share your experiences with creating and deploying Rich Internet Applications using OpenLaszlo. Send us a link to your talk and we'll put it up on the OpenLaszlo wiki and let folks know about it.
Applications: If you are an OpenLaszlo application developers, who knows the tag set and API, get involved by writing cool Openlaszlo applications and sharing them.. Send us a link and we'll link to it from the OpenLaszlo wiki and let folks know about it.
Bugs: Tell us about them using JIRA. Create a simple test case that demonstrates the problem and attach it. Better yet, if you want to really get involved, start fixing them as well. Download the source, and hack away.
Build system: It works, but there's a lot of steps. There's some activity on the dev list about making Laszlo work with Maven; check in there if you're interested.
Components: OpenLaszlo ships with a set of base classes and a set of components. If you are comfortable with OOP and have written class or frameworks, consider getting involved as a component author. Do you have ideas for a better button component, or for a component that OpenLaszlo is flat out missing? Take a look at the source to the OpenLaszlo components. The source is included in both the source and the binary distributions, and is written completely in OpenLaszlo. See what you can do. Contribute your components and we'll make them avaialble in the incubator for early access.
Server integration: Do you know anything about integrating with IIS, or .NET? Are you interested in writing connectors for IMAP, LDAP, or other TLAs? Write an article, or submit some code!
Upgrades: OpenLaszlo doesn't build with Java 5.0 (although it runs with Java 5.0). We will gratefully accept contributions here.
Ports: Developers have expressed interest in making OpenLaszlo work with CLR, JVM, XUL, SVG, and XUL. Check on the dev list if you're interested in finding a group to work with.

Contributor Guidelines

You will have an easier time understanding the design of the OpenLaszlo platform if you understand these principles:

Size matters: OpenLaszlo applications are deployed over the open web to users who are not technologists. They are not interested in downloading a large file in order to try out a new technology; they are using a OpenLaszlo application to accomplish a specific task. If you are not a web page developer, you may be surprised at how much difference each additional 1K makes. We are working hard to further reduce the size of OpenLaszlo applications, and will only consider changes to the required library of the client runtime if they affect the size of existing applications minimally or not at all.
OpenLaszlo isn't Flash: Flash is only one of the currently supported output formats, OpenLaszlo also supports DHTML. Features should only be added to the platform where they can be added in a runtime-neutral way. (No timelines and movie clips, please!) We don't want to be hamstrung by Flash-specific APIs.

See Be a Contributor for more information.