"Rich Internet Applications can substantially advance the Web user experience by enabling greater functionality in browser-based Web applications," said David Boloker (pictured), Chief Technology Officer of Emerging Internet Technologies, IBM Software Group, as it was annonced Laszlo Systems has teamed with IBM to propose the "IDE for Laszlo" integrated development environment (IDE) project at Eclipse, a joint initiative designed to further accelerate the development and deployment of OpenLaszlo applications.

IBM intends to contribute the "IDE for Laszlo," which it says will allow developers to build RIAs, more quickly and easily, using Eclipse. IBM initially launched the "IDE for Laszlo" last year on IBM's emerging technology Web site, alphaWorks. Since then, the "IDE for Laszlo" has been downloaded more than 13,000 times and continues to be a top rated alphaWorks download.

The OpenLaszlo platform is an open source, XML-native platform for developing RIAs that run in any modern Web browser. Since Laszlo Systems announced its open source status last October, OpenLaszlo has been downloaded more than 60,000 times and is being deployed in applications serving millions of users.

In a related announcement, IBM is also making "Faces for Laszlo" available for download on alphaWorks. The software allows developers to use OpenLaszlo to create rich Internet applications in portals and J2EE environments.

 "By contributing the Eclipse IDE for Laszlo and making Faces for Laszlo available on alphaWorks IBM aims to give developers an easy-to-use tool to create these applications in less time, using skills they already have. This is also aimed at accelerating the uptake of RIAs in the open source community," said Boloker. 

Laszlo Systems' Vice President, Engineering, Oliver Steele said, "OpenLaszlo has become a reliable platform for thousands of developers, creating applications with the rich user interface capabilities of desktop client software and the instantaneous no-download Web deployment of HTML. This announcement further solidifies our position as the leading platform for rich Internet application development."

The "IDE for Laszlo" currently available at IBM alphaWorks (http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com) allows developers to create, edit, debug, test, and preview applications, based on the LZX declarative mark-up language. The "IDE for Laszlo" project will also make available a rich editing environment with features including XML- and script-based content assistance, XML syntax highlighting and XML code formatting. It will include extensions that will enable other software vendors to provide value-added functionality such as the ability to add visual components and component libraries, custom property editors for runtime visual components, and listeners for runtime events and logging operations.