New features in Morfik 2.1

Aram Mirkazemi, Morfik's CEO and main architect, presented a new list of features for Morfik AppsBuilder 2.1, in a recent forum post. This post presents an interesting list of features that which Mirkazemi says will be available by the end of the second quarter of 2009.

Here are some of the highlights:

1. Page Architecture and Search Engine Optimization - Pages are a new kind of project object. During the beta phase of AppsBuilder 2.0 there was a period where a Page object was available as well. This might be a refinement of that concept.

2. Plug-in architecture for controls, downloadable plug-ins - It seems that Morfik will be making available sample plug-ins to demo the usage of this architecture, when 2.1 is released. The only sample specifically identified is a plug-in for handling user authentication. This new architecture will form the basis for new and more powerful controls.

3. Editable continuous forms - This is presented as a subitem of the previous one in the original post, but anyone that has done any serious development with Morfik AppsBuilder should know that it deserves a special place of its own. This will be available as a third type of form (single, continuous and now grid).

4. Push button XApp hosting platform - This service is supposed to be available in a similar time frame to AppsBuilder 2.1 and will in fact require it in order to be used.

5. C# Support - A version of Morfik AppsBuilder using C# as its programming language is supposed to be available when 2.1 is finally released.

Another item of interest in the post is that the update to the Morfik documentation has been delayed and should not be available in the same time frame as 2.1.

Sometimes it is easier than you think...

Just this week a developer who was building his first application with Morfik looked me up and was really eager to get me to look over his project because of some problems he was having. He had convinced himself that the trouble he was having was because he didn't really know Morfik AppsBuilder and that that was holding back his progress.

I can understand the feeling. I believe we all can as most developers have started to use a new set of tools more than once in his/her life. As it turned out, in this case, it was mostly the preconception that the problem was due to lack of specialized knowledge that was keeping him from moving forward.

Of the two problems he showed me, the first was just a simple error in the logic of the procedure he had coded. The problem was so obvious when you looked at it that he was embarrassed. (I can sympathize as I did something similar just two weeks ago.)

The second problem was indeed something that was specific to Morfik, but again, the solution was quite obvious as it was pretty much stated in the error message he was getting and on the screen where he had to check to try to understand the problem. He wanted images embedded in the database fields but had defined them as linked. Again, in this case, he wasn't really looking for the solution as he pretty much assumed that he wouldn't find it.

Sometimes you need to relax and realize that things really can be that easy.

Running Morfik on a Mac

Since Morfik is a Windows application, I would guess that there are few Mac users out there using it, right now. It is, however, perfectly usable when running from within a Parallels's virtual machine.

I tried this setup, recently, as I have been moving more and more towards becoming a a full time user of OS X and Morfik AppsBuilder is the single irreplaceable Windows application I still use. It worked quite well. I worked out so well that I decided to take the plunge and move definitively to the Mac.

I am using a basic model MacBook, one of the white ones, so anything newer than that should have even better performance. I can compare the performance of running AppsBuilder in this computer, through the virtual machine is comparable to the performance I get while running it on a Turium X2 based computer with 2 GB or RAM.


I have to admit that I did upgrade the MacBook's original 1GB to a full 4GB in order to run the virtual machine. I installed a copy of Windows XP Home in the virtual machine, which seemed like the best option as it requires much less system resources than Vista. Giving it a full gigabyte of RAM to use made things worked fine while running in Parallels' coheerance mode Morfik pretty much just seems to be another Mac application. (even though it has this Office 2007-look)

Now what I need to look into is how to get rid of that Windows Taskbar floating over my dock, while I'm using Morfik.