Before AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) had a name, there was Laszlo Systems, a software tools developer using AJAX-like methods along with with Macromedia's Flash player to deliver richer Web experiences. David Temkin tells us why he chose the Flash player as a platform. Laszlo went open source and chose IBM's Common Public License as it was flexible enough to fit their needs without curbing commercial use.

David plans to leverage rich client environments other than Flash Player, such as DHTML, Java and .Net and shares his about thoughts about Eclipse, the recent Adobe/Macromedia merger, refactoring the desktop user interface and calendar interoperability. He also explains why Flash is not an ideal platform for mobile devies and desktop applications and compares Laszlo Blog Boxes to widgets in Apple's Dashboard and Yahoo's Konfabulator.

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David Temkin is Chief Technology Officer of Laszlo Systems, Inc. In this role, he has positioned the company to become the next technology standard for rich Internet applications. Under his direction, Laszlo developed its patent-pending open-source product suite and extended operations to both coasts of the United States. Before founding Laszlo, Temkin was senior director of engineering at Excite@Home where he led a team of 55 engineers, designers and technical writers responsible for developing the company's consumer software. Prior to Excite@Home, Temkin was an engineering manager in the Newton division at Apple Computer and developed enterprise software at EDS. He graduated from Brown University with a double major in computer science and history, and is named on four software patents.

Resources:

• Laszlo Systems
• Wikipedia entry on AJAX
• Konfabulator
• Apple Dashboard

This program is from the Opening Move series.

For Team ITC:

• Description editor: Scott Mace
• Post-production audio engineer: Paul Figgiani