The Morfik Watch

Today Morfik has announced the release of “Morfik 07″, the production name of the platform we have known as Morfik, Morfik WebOS AppsBuilder, AppsBuilder.

The good things:
1. As we all now, it will be a “FREE full and complete working version for non-commercial use”.
2. When I build that killer application and I need many, many servers - I will pay nothing more then a single license, because of “ROYALTY-FREE DEPLOYMENT: One server: zero dollars. Ten-thousand servers: zero dollars.”

The bad thing:
1. US$5000 per developer for commercial use with significant concessions available for
subscribers to Pioneers’ 07 services and educational institutions.

Off-topic things:
1. As we all Delphi developers know - Delphi 7 was the best Delphi version ever. And now Morfik starts from there with the 07
2. 07 is one 0 away from 007. I don’t know still what this means, but I am thinking about it as a very good sign.

Here is the full Morfik press release.

Here the MorfikWiki is.

Here is a great presentation by quirksmode about the gaps that lie between Web Developers and Application Developers. Page 3 and Page 4 of presentation:

Web Developers
* Excellent knowledge of HTML and CSS
* Excellent knowledge of accessibility
but…
* No knowledge of application design
* spaghetti coding

Application Developers
* Excellent knowledge of application design
* Structured coding
but…
* No accessibility knowledge
* Little HTML and CSS knowledge

On a funny side, I am really confused: I am working as a (Desktop) Application Developer, and I thought when I start use the AppsBuilder, I will automatically become a Web Developer. It turns out I won’t, until I learn HTML, Javascript and CSS. I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I dont’ want to! I don’t want to fight with every browser weirdness on earth. And that’s untill I need some cool effects.

Update
As I read my post, I’ve wrote it quite confusing, so I will update it know.

Of course I think XHTML, JavaScript and CSS are important. They are “the bolts and nuts” of web application development, and every web developer should have a good understanding of them.

My problem, and I think most of the people coming from the Application Development world, starts, and with most f them ends, with browser incompatibilities. When you have to fight over and over on some weired problem, doing a thousand google searches, so finally you find a hack so every decent browser on earth can understand your code. That’s the problem, and that’s why I don’t want to deal with “low level” languages.
Not that I am not keen with JavaScript, I found my self an intermediate JavaScript developer.

So that’s what I’ve meant with my blog post (I don’t want to, I
don’t want to, I dont’ want to! ).

I really hope AppsBuilder will help a lot with this particular problem.

I just installed my first 3rd party component in WebOS Apps Builder: TAnalogClock. It is build by Peter Illés. I first wrote about him here, when he gave me a hack (then it was a hack), on how to use external JavaScript in Morfik.
It is a “browser independent vector graphics”. The cool thing is that when you install the component, following a simple guide in the readme.txt, there is a new icon in the component palette between Google, Zapatec, Dojo and the others.

Peter’s blog post about it is here. The Demo application is at Morfik Labs

I am feeling like when I first installed TColouredButon (or something) in Delphi. Like “Hello World” action in components world.

Recently I paused blogging, well writing, not reading, for lack of time, but now I am back. While I was not here, AjaxDeveloper has put some nice retrospectives of the new releases of WebOS Apps Builder. The funny thing is it proclaimed it self as Morfik Rumor Central. I, The Morfik Watch, welcome you to the world of Morfik blogging and wish you Morfik Rumor Central all the best

And now I can say only two things about the new IDE: It is Fast!, and it has intellisense. As I am coming from the world of lazy Delphi developers the new autocompletion feature is my favorite. The releases include also:

• Access to Framework source.
• ODBC improvements
• Computer Aided Coding (CAC) features: Code Navigation, Code completion, Identifier occurrences highlighting, Code folding, Statement highlighting.
• Service Connectors: major upgrade, Support for Salesforce.com and more
• Major bug fixes and updates to the MSSQL, MySQL and Oracle ODBC connectivity
• Many more minor and major improvements and bug fixes
• JavaScript Builder - I will have to look more at it. But I think it is for creating JavaScript modules, by writing code in your favorite language: Java, C#, Pascal or VB.

And by fast I mean … FAST The slow compilation on my relatively good machine, AMD Athlon 2500+, 1 Gb Ram, was driving me nuts before, and often made me stop exploring the IDE. But now it seems that it will work fast on even slower machines.

So, I see versions 0.9.11, 0.9.12, 09.13 - we are coming quite near v1.0. Since I first heard about Morfik more than a year ago - it was a long waiting, and what I am seeing with latest releases all the waiting is worth it.

And now, the other great news: Morfik will provide everyone with a FREE version for non-commercial use, the only thing you will have to do is to join the Morfik Developers Network (free membership). This is a good move, since most of other companies does not offer such a thing. They offer limited functionality with the free version, or time restrictions or something else - but this is not the case here!

What is your thoughts about latest version of WebOS Apps Builder?