What's New
From Morfikwiki.com
Morfik's new Release 2 of the Morfik Web Development platform (codename M2) is available as two separate products: Morfik AppsBuilder BX (for Basic programmers) and Morfik AppsBuilder FX (for Pascal programmers). They are in essence direct descendants of Morfik’s WebOS AppsBuilder Web development environment and toolset and have been created to address developers with different needs.
Morfik Web Applications can be used in two variations: a hosted cloud-computing model, in which a Morfik agent handles server management, and a more traditional you-do-it-all model.
In the Cloud Computing model of deployment, a Morfik application can start by using the pre-defined services provided by the Morfik agent that encompasses most needs of interactive websites allowing the user to focus on creating the browser side of the website/application. By providing database access, web service proxying, sending emails, and user authentication capabilities, the Morfik agent frees the user from the hassles of server maintenance and the need to know how to do server-side programming. This is the ideal solution for users that are looking for the quickest, easiest way to create an interactive online presence.
In the more traditional Web Services model, the user can create his/her own Web services and publishes APIs for other sites/applications to call their applications, deployed to any server running Windows or a supported Linux distribution. This makes this the ideal option for Intranet deployments and for ISVs that want to develop Web-based applications.
The following is a list of the major new features announced with Release 2 with a short description grouped by the product it applies to.
[edit] Themes and Theme-Aware Controls
AppsBuilder gives the developer access to themes, which are organized color palettes and font styles, assigned to different default settings. Themes give the user unprecedented ease in customizing the look of a Morfik-built application or website without interfering with application logic. Themes you add or change are available to you in all your applications. If your Marketing department wants to tweak all your applications to fit a new corporate logo, you can do it in minutes.
Custom themes used in an application are stored within the project so that it can be properly moved to another machine without impact on how the application looks.
For more information see: Working with Themes
[edit] New & Custom Controls
Calendar and ProgressBar controls have been added.
Morfik 2 introduces a new architecture for custom controls, allowing indepedent developers to develop controls for Morfik. The GoogleMap and Wysiwyg controls are the first controls to take advantage of this architecture.
[edit] Morfik Effects
Special graphics effects have been added to all controls where they made sense and to Form Bands. By combining design and graphics tools right into the Form designer Morfik now allows you to create great looking applications and websites easily and quickly.
For further information see: Control Effects
[edit] Split-able Containers
By right-clicking on any container in a Morfik AppsBuilder R2 Form you can select an option to split it either vertically or horizontally. This applies to the Form's bands as well.
For more information see: Defining a Form Layout
[edit] Image Bundling
In order to optimize performance in Morfik applications the compiler now bundles together the images it generates for the Morfik Effects. This allows smoother rendering of the web pages that use Morfik Effects.
[edit] Clean URLs
Allow users to access your web pages using elegant, easy-to-remember URLs.
For more information see: Clean URLs
[edit] Web Actions
AppsBuilder provides a series of predefined actions which can be visually tied to events triggered by controls. This translates into great ease of use for the user who is not an experienced developer, while empowering the experienced developer to create his/her own actions, which are automatically picked up by the Morfik IDE.
Related video: How to use Web Actions
[edit] Support for OpenSocial and Facebook APIs
AppsBuilder comes with direct support for the OpenSocial and Facebook APIs to allow the user to create applications that interact with these platforms.
[edit] Synchronized Browser Code
The new compiler in AppsBuilder automatically generates specialized code to simulate synchronous behavior for browser side code that makes asynchronous function calls, without ever blocking the browser. This makes it much simpler to program certain aspects of application logic. Using this features it is easy, for example, to create simple animations.
[edit] Web Service Data Sources
Morfik has always used a Web Services-based architecture to allow its browser-side code to access database information. In AppsBuilder, this architecture has been extended to allow Morfik applications to access any Web Service which conforms to a certain set of rules as a data source. This allows browser-only applications to access data published by other Morfik Applications or by services implemented with other tools such as PHP, .Net or Java.
[edit] Auto-Deployment To Cloud Computing Environment
AppsBuilder provides support for hosted cloud computing services. Applications can be automatically deployed from within the IDE. This feature, which runs through a few steps in a Wizard, can be called with a single click, and allows Morfik users to enjoy the easiest and fastest turnaround time to take a project "From Concept To Consumer".
[edit] Helper methods
AppsBuilder allows any data type in the supported language types to be extended through the addition of user-defined helper methods. This feature has been used extensively by Morfik to add formatting, conversion and utility methods to all basic data types. This compiler feature, added to the new methods implemented as part of the M2 framework, make the M2 code completion much more powerful and useful as utility ‘functions’ become semantically tied to the data type they are meant to be used with.
[edit] Enhanced Compiler
The Morfik AppsBuilder compiler has been enhanced in many ways, including, but not limited to, improved optimization, parallel compiling, full background compiling (without ever blocking the IDE) and the inclusion of new language features such as helper methods.
[edit] Enhanced Web Methods
Web Methods (a Morfik implemented Web Service) can be declared in any module, without the need to create Web Method documents for each method. This makes it easier and faster to create more extensive Web Service APIs. It also performs an automatic browser-side import of Web Methods which are declared on the server side of a Form module. Creation of Web Methods applies to Web Application projects only, but both Browser Application projects and Web Application projects can call a Web Method.
For more information see: Creating Web Methods - In code
[edit] Browser Only Applications
Morfik has identified a large demand for what are essentially purely browser applications, be they Facebook applications, Google Widgets or highly interactive front-ends for corporate back-end systems. To address this market, Morfik has introduced the concept of Browser Applications, building on its revolutionary Javascript Synthesis Technology (JST), which focus entirely on browser development technology. These applications are totally server agnostic and can be deployed to any web server in the world. Browser applications can still make Web Service calls. Browser Applications are ideal for companies and individuals who want to enter the social network application space, or that have an established Web presence that they want to enhance.
[edit] Automatic Data Forms
AppsBuilder introduces as a new concept the automatic Data Form. This feature allows the developer to treat a data source as if it were a Form, and just instruct the Morfik Framework to open the data source in a specific section of a page (inside a SubForm control). A tabular view of the data source’s data will be presented to the user with an alternating line (also referred to as a zebra, or greenbar) background that matches the current application theme. This automatically generated Form will also offer the user the possibility to switching to a single-record view for data editing. (Browser XApps do not allow data editing.)
[edit] XML data sources
Browser Applications are able to see XML files as if they were a database table. This allows a user to create a website that can take advantage of several of Morfik’s database-oriented features even though the end application might be browser-only and deployed to any web server.
For further information see: Defining XML Data Sources
[edit] New Way of Calling Web Services
AppsBuilder allows users to see Web Services as objects with properties to be set before execution and other properties to read after the service execution in order to verify call results. Combined with the synchronized browser code, this feature makes calling Web Services a breeze.
For more information see: Calling Web Methods
[edit] RSS Feed designer
Creating RSS feeds has been made exceedingly easy in AppsBuilder through the addition of an RSS feed editor that allows the user to choose from among his data sources the one which will provide the information for the feed and to visually map the data source’s fields with the RSS information slot.
For more information see: Creating RSS Feeds
More information about the changes in each release can be found in the following articles:
