The talk began with the “Where are we headed?” question. Users are expecting a much more interactive, responsive, and good looking interface than they were even just a few years ago. Flash (and now alternatively DHTML) based Laszlo provides all the graphics support – prototype based tools, in a constraint based – inheritance enabled API, that you need to create your site.

Mike answered the anti-Flash portion of the audience with “Don’t hate the player, hate the game”. Loosely translated: Don’t hate Flash because some people abuse it. It can be a powerful tool and is widely distributed/available throughout the browser-user community. As I had quickly mentioned earlier, a DHTML engine has recently become available for Laszlo as well. The demo Mike gave (LZ Pics) illustrated a responsive Laszlo app leveraging the DHTML backend.

Much of the talk centered around demos available at openlaszlo.com. Check out that site for plenty of cool demos and illustrations (especially Laszlo in 10 Minutes, if you’re new).

The actual intersection of Laszlo/Rails was not covered in a whole lot of depth, but more info can be found here and here.

And more on the thought that went into developing this specific talk here.