Morfik FX is a tool for developing Ajax-based Web applications. It is one of a family of tools from Morfik Technologies, a company based in Australia. Morfik FX is an update to a product previously called Morfik WebOS AppsBuilder and uses the

Object Pascal Object Pascal is an extension to the programming language Pascal (programming language), Pascal that provides object-oriented programming (OOP) features such as Class (computer programming), classes and Method (computer programming), methods. T ...

programming language for writing all the application's code, for both the

Web browser A web browser, often shortened to browser, is an application for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's scr ...

and

Server Server may refer to: Computing *Server (computing), a computer program or a device that provides requested information for other programs or devices, called clients. Role * Waiting staff, those who work at a restaurant or a bar attending custome ...

portions. Morfik FX provides a

Rapid Application Development Rapid application development (RAD), also called rapid application building (RAB), is both a general term for adaptive software development approaches, and the name for James Martin's method of rapid development. In general, RAD approaches to ...

(RAD) environment for the creation of Web applications. This environment included a Visual Designer with

WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for what you see is what you get, refers to software that allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed document, web ...

capabilities that supports a range of visual effects.

Product History

The first Professional License for Morfik WebOS AppsBuilder (the precursor to Morfik FX), was by acquired by

Greenpeace International Greenpeace is an independent global campaigning network, founded in Canada in 1971 by a group of environmental activists. Greenpeace states its goal is to "ensure the ability of the Earth to nurture life in all its diversity" and focuses its ...

in October, 2006, and two months later,

Altium Altium Limited is an American multinational software company that provides electronic design automation software to engineers who design printed circuit boards. Founded as Protel Systems Pty Ltd in Australia in 1985, the company has regional he ...

deployed the first commercial application built with ''WebOS AppsBuilder''. It was a

mashup Mashup may refer to: * Mashup (culture), the rearrangement of spliced parts of musical pieces as part of a subculture * Mashup (education), combining various forms of data and media by a teacher or student in an instructional setting * Mashup (mus ...

with

Salesforce.com Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, e-commerce, analytics, artificial intelligence, and appl ...

applications which permitted a hierarchical view of all projects managed through Salesforce.com. In March 2007, v1.0 was officially released {{cite web , url= http://www.sys-con.com/read/352519.htm , title=Morfik 07 Released With Zero-Deployment-Cost Perpetual License , publisher= Market Wire , date=2007-03-22 and its name was changed to "Morfik 07"). See als
here
In November 2008, v2.0 of the AppsBuilder product was officially released with an entirely redesigned interface. This release broke down the programming language support into separate versions called FX (Object Pascal) and BX (Basic). It was at this point that the Morfik FX product moniker was introduced. In August 2009, Morfik released AppsBuilder 2.1 which, though numbered as a simple point update, contained a significant number of new features such as the ability to visually create Widgets (user created controls). With this release support for the C# programming language which was dropped with the release of 2.0, was reintroduced with a Morfik CX moniker. In October 2010 Morfik released AppsBuilder 3.0 with improved support for Widgets and Packages. Version 3.0 of Morfik FX adds a new set of visual design objects which represent individual pages within an application. These objects make it much easier for developers to create the navigational structure of their applications in a manner that is search engine friendly. In November 2010 Morfik Technologies, the maker of Morfik FX, was acquired by

Limited.

Distinguishing Product Features

Morfik FX is a Web development tool that runs on the Windows operating system. The following are the most distinguishing features of Morfik FX: * All coding for both the browser and server portions of the application is written in

. * Applications created with Morfik FX are 100% based on

Ajax Ajax may refer to: Greek mythology and tragedy * Ajax the Great, a Greek mythological hero, son of King Telamon and Periboea * Ajax the Lesser, a Greek mythological hero, son of Oileus, the king of Locris * Ajax (play), ''Ajax'' (play), by the an ...

. * All interface design is done visually, within the Morfik development environment. * The server side portion of applications created with Morfik FX is compiled into native code for Windows or Linux. * The browser side portion of applications created with Morfik FX is compiled into

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

, HTML, CSS and image files. * The Morfik development environment can be extended, incorporating new controls and capabilities through the addition of packages which are created with Morfik FX itself.

Visual Development

Morfik uses a WYSIWYG interface designer to allow the developer to visually create the interface for web-based applications. The visual designers built into the Morfik development environment closely parallel visual design tools for desktop application development, providing the same sort of capabilities for the creation Web applications. While visually designing the interface of a Web application with Morfik FX the developer will create Forms which define the positioning of controls and their appearance and then combine these Forms in a higher level visual object called a Page.

Web Services

Morfik provides two different ways for developers to create Web Service entry points in Web applications. In Morfik terminology these entry point are called Web Methods. There is a visual editor for defining the input and output parameters of Web Methods which also creates the

boilerplate code In computer programming, boilerplate code, or simply boilerplate, are sections of code that are repeated in multiple places with little to no variation. When using languages that are considered ''verbose'', the programmer must write a lot of boile ...

for handling both the server and browser side to guide the developer. An experienced developer can, however, totally bypass the visual designer and just hand code the entry points which are implemented as specialized classes with special metadata attributes applied to them.

References

Ajax (programming) Object-oriented programming languages Pascal (programming language) Software companies of Australia

Product History

Distinguishing Product Features

Visual Development

Web Services

See also

References