Morfik seems to be stirring again

Posted on October 29, 2011 by Mauricio Longo

It has been a long while since I’ve posted anything on MorfikWatch.  Not too long ago someone asked me about it and I replied that I wasn’t posting because there wasn’t much to write about.

After releasing Morfik 3.0 and a couple of hotfixes/patches for it, Altium seemed to let the product go dormant.  Not much was heard out their offices about Morfik since then.

This seems to have started to change about a month ago.  Altium released updates to a couple of Morfik packages, then.  These were the first updates to anything that was Morfik related in about eight months.  Just a few days ago, another updated package was released.

It seems to me that Morfik, the product, is stirring again and that we might start to see package updates coming out more frequently and eventually get a new update to the toolset itself.

I guess it was to be expected that merging the Morfik development team into Altium and moving to China in quick succession would cause some disruption, but it has really been a while since we had any interesting news.   I hope this will change soon and we’ll get to see lots of interesting stuff coming out of Altium’s R&D group.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 1 Comment

Altium changes Morfik licensing

Posted on November 14, 2010 by Mauricio Longo

Okay, the news is two days old now… I’m sorry it took me so long post about it, but I’ve gifted with a very bad case of the flu for the past couple of days.  It isn’t easy to formulate an informed opinion, much less write about it when you are running a high fever and having difficulty to breath.

Now that I’m a bit better, I can come out and say it:  I love it!

Morfik has always been built on top of a great technology base, and has grown considerably in sophistication and capabilities with each subsequent release.  The product has attracted a number of software developers and ISVs which see the clear advantages of having a single tool with which to do all their Web development work and that creates redistributable binaries.

All that said, the fact that there are so many bits of free software available on the ‘net makes a lot of people shy away from even looking at commercial tools.  With Morfik being now effectively free, I expect we’ll see a lot more new people and companies checking out the tool and eventually joining the community.

Morfik has been rolling out quite a number of additional packages for the tool, which nicely provide ready made functionality, but which are not a requirement for the creation of great apps.  These packages help developers save a lot of development effort in creating great looking applications or implementing frequently used services such as user authentication controls.

The cost that has been set for participating in the support program should not represent a problem for just about anyone that has decided to use Morfik professionally. This program provides a nice way to get access to libraries which provide sophisticated, ready-to-use, functionality for developers to incorporate into their applications.

This certainly seems like a good move by Altium and one which should help bring a lot more attention to Morfik.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Altium completes the acquisition of Morfik

Posted on November 3, 2010 by Mauricio Longo

Australian tech sites are reporting that Morfik’s acquisition by Altium has been completed. I understand that the acquisition initiative had to follow specific procedures due to the fact that Altium is a publicly traded company and thus needs to comply with the corresponding rules.

I don’t believe there was much doubt that the acquisition would come through, but it is good to know that the formalities are out of the way.

Altium has maintained that Morfik 3 should be released this month which is great news as it makes its new features the current form of the technology and allows everyone who may be waiting for the version 3 to leave beta status to fully embrace it.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Altium to acquire Morfik

Posted on September 16, 2010 by Mauricio Longo

I’ve been away from this blog for a while as I’ve been putting a lot of work into two projects. Having spent the past two months working on a business process consulting project at the same time I have been writing a new book has left me with very little time for my more casual writing projects.

The announcement of Morfik’s acquisition by Altium is reason enough to bring me out of the woodwork and comment a bit.   The news has been spreading around the IT news sites quite rapidly.

Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

iPad support, a great move for the future

Posted on July 21, 2010 by Mauricio Longo

In the first beta releases of version 3 we can see Morfik’s initial steps in support for the creation of mobile applications.  The two major targets are the iPhone and the iPad as can be clearly seen by the specialized views in the Morfik debug browser.

This is a great move for the future, not only because it might seem to open new markets for Morfik developers to explore but because of the change in computer usage patterns that is to come.  If you have had the opportunity to use an iPad for a few days, you might know what I am talking about.

As has been widely commented, many iPad users are changing the their computing habits and using more and more the device in activities previously done on regular desktop or notebook computers.  These users do more of their browsing on the iPad, because of its convenience or simply because it is initiated from an iPad application such as a Twitter or email client.  Whatever the reason, these users are already numbered in the millions as by the end of the last quarter Apple had already sold 3.27 million iPads and can’t seem to produce them in the quantity that customers are buying.

Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , | 1 Comment

7th Firebird Developer’s Day

Posted on July 5, 2010 by Mauricio Longo

In just under two weeks I’ll be traveling to Piracicaba, a town in the Brazilian state of São Paulo to attend the 7th Firebird Developer’s Day.  This event has been held once a year for the past six years, bringing together Firebird users from all over Brazil.

It is by no means a small event, even though its attendance is mainly restricted to Brazilians, the number of people at the event is generally in the range of 550 to 700.  Considering that Piracicaba is not a large metropolis, most attendees have to travel great distances to reach the location of the event, which doesn’t seem to discourage many.

In this year’s event I will be presenting a session on the creation of Web applications using Morfik 3 and Firebird.  This year I plan to go through all the steps involved in creating a functioning application so that attendees can get a good idea of what is involved in using Morfik 3 to create rich web applications that interact with Firebird databases.

If you are a Brazilian Morfik user and can make the trip, join us in discussing Firebird techniques, usage scenarios and the new features of the next release which  is now in Release Candidate status.

Posted in Database | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Morfik 3 Pages and Page Templates

Posted on July 4, 2010 by Mauricio Longo

An article describing the usage and creation of Page Templates in Morfik 3 has just been published here on Morfik Watch.  This article is the first to be added to the new Articles section of this website and it should be followed by several others in the next couple of days.

Posted in Announcements | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Welcome to Morfik Watch 1.9!

Posted on June 20, 2010 by Mauricio Longo

Welcome to the new version of the Morfik Watch blog.  It has been a long time in coming and to tell the truth it hasn’t quite landed in full yet.  That is why I gave it the 1.9 version number.

Almost two years ago I created Morfik Watch to write about everything remotely related to Morfik.  Almost at the same time I created some communities for Morfik users, using the free services of Ning.  I was never really happy with Blogger, the publishing platform on Which Morfik Watch was based or Ning.

Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Morfik 3 and mobile development

Posted on June 8, 2010 by Mauricio Longo

If you haven’t downloaded the beta version of Morfik 3 you should stop wasting your time.  Morfik 3 introduces a new page templates feature which let you easily create reusable layouts and basic page configurations.

This is really useful in getting started with a new project as you will be able to reuse layouts and parts of your application design that you might have already created in a previous project and saved into a template.  It is even more useful is that now that you can create pages that are specific to the iPhone and for general computers withing the same application and have the Morfik Framework automatically serve out the correct ones.  The selection is done automatically based on the device that is being used to access the application.

In adding explicit support for mobile applications into the its development environment and framework Morfik went all the way in and added support for previewing applications as they will look in the iPhone and on the iPad.  The Morfik debug browser now has a small button on the far right of its toolbar that allows the developer to choose from a list of devices and screen orientations.

The following picture shows the BookCollector sample application loaded into the iPhone preview.  The iPhone “version” of the application will contain only the pages you specify through links from the iPhone start page.  The same is true for iPad versions of your applications, though you can choose to have more than one type of device using the same pages.

The next picture shows the same application in preview mode, simulating its execution in an iPad in portrait display orientation.

At this time, Morfik supports Apple’s line up of mobile products: iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, though applications should work on other mobile devices that a fully functional browser.  This generally means that applications should function okay on Android devices, as Google’s browser implementation is based on WebKit, just as mobile Safari.  There can be no guarantee that the applications will look good on all Android devices as they all have different screen sizes and resolutions.

Morfik 3 also introduce a pair of new controls: Menu Bar and Repeater.  I’ll take a closer look at these controls and other Morfik 3 features in other follow up posts.

Posted in M3, Mobility, Visual Design | Leave a comment

Morfik 3 goes into beta

Posted on June 8, 2010 by Mauricio Longo

Morfik has just made available for download from their website the first beta version of Morfik 3. This is the next major version of the company’s flagship product and as the more recent posts to the official Morfik blog indicate it is packed with new features.

Along with the beta version the company’s website has been entirely redesigned with a full corporate brand makeover including a new logo and color scheme for the product and web properties.

I’ll be following up this short post with more detailed information during the day.  Right now I just wanted to make sure that everybody knew to download the beta version.

Posted in M3 | Leave a comment