Morfik and Rapid Development of Modern Web Apps

Bobby Jasper writes to tell us that The Firebird Database Community News has an interesting writeup on Morfik, a new development tool for beginning web applications. Morfik boasts increased developer productivity going so far as to draw comparisons between themselves and the current industry as VB 1.0 was to GUI development. After five years of development they are getting ready to release an evaluation version of their software, might be worth a look.

Comments

realy?

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's the First,Post VB, gui like tool?

windows only

[Anonymous Coward]

Morfik development environment itself is a Windows application

You might have mentioned that in the writeup so non-MSCEs
didn't waste their time reading TFA

Re:windows only

[jurt1235]

They could have saved themselves several years of development by using opensource. A tool similar to morfik (MVC model, ajax development, some datamodelling) is for example this one: http://swerl.tudelft.nl/twiki/pub/Main/AvailableOp enProjects/backbase-eclipse.doc

There are probably a lot more (google on +eclipse +plugin +ajax gives 234.000 hits)

Re:windows only

[dorkygeek]

Better head over to http://www.backbase.com/ then. And yes, they eat their own dog food!

Re:windows only

[daviddennis]

Over $900 for a version running on a shared server, or over $5,000 for one for dedicated servers?

I like the concept, but don't have that kind of money :-(.

D

Well its got the buzzwords

[Viol8]

"Revolutionary new", "smart client" , "feature-rich", "unplugged", "ground breaking".

Perhaps I'm a cynic but I always feel that a products real value is inversely proportional to
the amount of marketdroid BS in the write-ups. If I'm correct then this is just Yet-Another-IDE
that is (and wow, like this is so radical dude , well if would be if it was 1990 again) - a Smart
Client! Jeez... how many times we been here before?

Re:Well its got the buzzwords

[a.d.trick]

Indeed. Not to mention that "smart client" is actually a Bad Thing. The web is egalitarian and ideally a web site or web application should be able to cater to all User Agents, whether they're smart or dumb. Things like asyncronus server requests through javascript should be the icing on the cake.

They are trying to use javascript way more than it should be. Program logic should be on the server side and when it is not you start having lots of problems with security holes as well as bugs because browsers have buggy javascript interpreters.

Re:Well its got the buzzwords

[rjshields]

Could it be that this development tool is aimed at other marketdroids? I can just imagine them dragging in some feature-rich controls and clicking the "generate ground breaking web app" button.

Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been waiting for something like this, finally I can merge the syntactic and semantic elegance of VB with the power and speed of a compiled language with a fast WYSIWYG development and deployment cycle!

Re:Great!

[estebanf]

lol
check the page source code. You can read a "Generated by Morfik XS http//www.morfik.com" on top... and then realize that the generated code is not compliant with xhtml or html strict.... So using ccs2 with this "mega tool" will be another pain in the ass.
Good job pionners!

Paid

[dg41]

OK, who paid for the Slashdot press release on this?

Interesting, but...

[BladeMelbourne]

Interesting, but in every company I have worked at; the language used depends upon the current hosting environment used by the client.

I'm all for "increased developer productivity", however in the work place I have yet to even use Ruby.

Oh well, .NET 2.0 is sure to kill me (or fry my chip due to the CPU requirements or their IDEs) so I guess it doesn't matter anyway.

Lot's of nice words, but where is the software?

[master_p]

For something so grand as they claim, their first job would be to post an evaluation download for everyone to see. I followed the links, but I found nothing; I only found lots of buzzwords, claims and hype.

I don't claim Morfik is vaporware. But let's see it first, and then we can say if it is indeed 'VB 1.0 for the web'.

Re:Lot's of nice words, but where is the software?

[desplesda]

It's not vapourware, since I worked on it for a while over the summer. It's actually pretty decent system for getting together a working web application - you program the system in a language very similar to Delphi, and it creates for you an executable that has Apache and Firebird embedded in it - it's a RAD solution, sure, but for home users, it's also a thing to double click on and all of a sudden your computer's a web server, and you can manage your finances, run a calendar, do your bookmarking, et cetera.

Re:Lot's of nice words, but where is the software?

[desplesda]

It turns out you can write it in other languages. After I left, it appears they added support for C#, VB, and others. As to being a host to trojans, I think that there are a few more dangerous threats out there than a web server. A web server can't act like Back Orifice does, unless there's some serious hacking going on with the program that Morfik's made to compile.

Re:Lot's of nice words, but where is the software?

[rjshields]

and it creates for you an executable that has Apache and Firebird embedded in it

Good god.

Welcome to the 100Mb calendar application.

Languages & Morfik

[jurt1235]

Morfik claims to be the next generation IDE. Totally for the webbrowser. So what do they build it with: Delphi.
That is not being true to yourself. Build an AJAX version than to show the power of what you believe in.
An AJAX version would also make the more and more preferred development environments accessible to them: Mac OS X and Linux (Around me I hear more and more developers choosing for Linux as their main platform, and if Apple would release OS X for the cheap intel hardware, that they will try that too, at least just to see).

Re:Languages & Morfik

[EvilNebby]

Morfic should be rewritten in Morfik.

Re:Pretty cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty cool, but I could not find any info on what languages they support.

Also from the article:

"The application logic is written in the developer's object oriented syntax of choice (currently Morfik Basic, Morfik Pascal, Morfik C# or Morfik Java)"

So, had ya actually read the article...

What Morfik is

[axonis]

Morfik is a professional Integrated Development Environment. The developer starts with designing the data layer in a visual environment similar to Microsoft Access or Microsoft Enterprise Manager. This is usually followed by the design of data base queries which again is carried out in a powerful visual environment. For the presentation layer the developer creates forms and reports using a familiar visual environment that resembles VB and Delphi. The application logic is written in the developer's object oriented syntax of choice (currently Morfik Basic, Morfik Pascal, Morfik C# or Morfik Java). There is also provision for developing web services. Once the individual components are defined and written, Morfik compiles the application into a single executable that incorporates a web server and database engine. This application demonstrates the behaviour of both web and desktop applications. The user can access the application through a browser on-line, off-line, locally and remotely. During the development cycle the developer has access to a comprehensive suit of debugging, profiling and testing facilities. Morfik applications are comprised purely of HTML and JavaScript yet the developer does not need to master these languages.

Re:What Morfik is

[gtoomey]

Yes your ad is all wel and good.

Why didnt the Morfik web site say that? Its marketing gobblygook.

Any one has sample code?

[bogaboga]

I really want to take a look at Morfik Basic, Morfik Pascal, Morfik C# or Morfik Java in action. Any one care to post sample code? What about screenshots?

No kidding

[nmb3000]

I tend to agree.

Besides, wasn't Slashdot just bashing Visual Studio and other "shake 'n bake" development tools? Why is this "unplugged" and "groundbreaking" new IDE so great? It "rots brains" faster?

Look ma! Morfik made a web-based CRM app, and I helped!

Faster != better when you have no idea how your application works or what makes it tick. Needing to call tech support when your web form breaks for some reason is not a step forward in development.

Where are the web standards

[zxSpectrum]

Assuming that they actually eat their own dog food, and use their own tool to create their Own site, I wouldn't trust this tool. Their site is an inaccessible piece of table-based rubble with missing alternative texts all over the place. Not even Slashdot in it's old incarnation was this ugly, standards-wise.

Adding to that, their site is severly SEO-deoptimized, which might -- now that I think of it -- be a good thing to end-users, as this will undoubtedly reduce the spread of said markup rubble

Re:Where are the web standards

[sgt101]

I think you've confused interactive site development with good site design. It's pretty easy to write a bad GUI for a stand alone app (desktop) in Java or C++, just as it's pretty easy to write a bad page design for a page centric app on the web. The point is that AJAX lets you write non-page centric apps on the web, and this tool supports that.

Actually, I take it as a good sign that they are focusing on their tech and not their site.

Re:Where are the web standards

[Surt]

But ... for a web development firm to have no one on site who understands web development well enough to write up a good site ... it doesn't bode well for how their tool will understand web development. Or in other words: if their site suggests no one there either cares enough or knows enough to develop a good site for their product, why should I trust that they know enough or care enough to develop a good website development tool.

Why is this even on /.?!

[Qa1]

This is basically a commercial for some source software package. They haven't released code. They haven't even releasd a closed source evaluation version. All they "released" is some web page with lots of hysterical marketing hype and unsubstantiated vague buzzwords ("JST").

So why, again, is this on /.?

What the fuckity fuck?

[kmmatthews]

How can anyone possibly claim this isn't an ad?

It's an "article" for a CLOSED SOURCE, WIN32 VAPORWARE PRODUCT that LIKENS ITSELF TO VISUAL BASIC.

For god sakes, that's like saying "WOW!!! THIS IS AS FUN AS AIDS!"

2 months to copy gmail with it??

[192939495969798999]

From the site:
"To demonstrate these powerful capabilities, two Morfik programmers used Morfik JST to build a desktop version of Google's Gmail in just 2 months! The application they created is a pixel-by-pixel match of Gmail's interface and functionality, yet it also works offline just like standard email clients such as Microsoft Outlook..."

2 Months?! That doesn't sound like any rapid app development to me. I can go make a copy of gmail in about 3 hours just by downloading the HTML/javascript. Also, it "works" just like Outlook? I'm not sure that's a feature!

Sadly misled.....

[ralf1]

My RSS feed truncated the title as "Morfik and Rapid Development of Modern We". Somehow my brain assumed "We" was going to be "weapons" - Morfik just seemed like a Defense Department kind of name for a top secret weapons project.

I was really hoping for some kind of macho article about "this new technology can kill effortlessly 10,000 civilians using a rechargable solar battery as a power source, making it a exceptional weapon and environmentally conscious as well"

Life is full of these little disappointments....

I'm actually working on something like this

[mandrake*rpgdx]

I plan on making a PHP Visual IDE for PHP+AJAX applications. The whole concept will be something like VB (more like Delphi, since it will be OO) and runs in a browser. So far, it's in the basic beta stages, but it works really well. It uses PHP objects to represent CSS tags and HTML tags, and each "object" has actions that will call PHP code (the idea is to take learning an extra language out of AJAX programming, and to create a visual environment).

So, you'll be able to drag and drop and place visually images, text, text boxes, etc. Be able to code these objects to have key events, mouse over events, etc. All from the web browser.

And yes it will be open source, no it won't be free as in free beer, and yes there will be a single site evaluation version for people to use (either with only one site, or to just try out).

right now, the code name is FireFly.

Looks cool but?

[codepunk]

Ok nifty idea but how does it perform in the real world. How well does it optimize the code to make up for the dismally slow IE java script engine. Both browsers could use some java script engine speed improvements but IE darn sure needs alot of help. Of course I don't expect the monopoly to do this as it is not in their best interest to allow applications to run in this fashion as it neutralizes their platform.

compiler with JavaScript backend

[idlake]

It had to happen: a compiler with a JavaScript backend...