Hatem @ AJAX Magazine wrote a very good primer on Morfik architecture — a good read for anyone.

Dan Webb has some important thoughts about the Flash v.s. Ajax debate and the comments on his site and on the Ajaxian site are also thought provoking.

Indeed it is anyone’s guess how WPF/E, Flash/Flex/OpenLaszlo, AJAX (Backbase, YUI, Dojo, Prototype, Qooxdoo,…), GWT, Eclipse/RAP and Morfik will mature but this year will be definitely very interesting for web application development!

Google Search and other similar crawlers have a difficult time with AJAX applications: they were tuned for full-page-load style traditional web content and don’t adapt well for single-page web applications, where many times there are no well identified URLs for different content and getting to content in the first place is trickier than following a few links (did I mention Flash-based apps?). And still, for most of these sites getting into searches (i.e. exposure) is essential.

ACAP (Automated Content Access Protocol) is a new initiative from the international publishing community to turn the challenges facing the industry from web technologies (especially search) into opportunities in a win-win way, and as a side effect can help Web Applications out, too.

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Today I had an enlightening experience. As I complained a couple of days ago, @Sweeper 0.8 (my Morfik Mine Sweeper clone) was dead slow when switching into Intermediate or Expert mode due to a lot of control demolitions/creations going on in the background. So I decided that some optimization was in order and today just wanted to look into doing this when (almost by coincidence) I discovered that the speed was much-much better (almost palatable for even a maximalist) than I originally experienced. What gives?

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I will present a very simple idea, possibly already somewhat doable with current technology (but enhancements to current technology would make it more efficient and robust). The problem is: AJAX applications (whether in OpenLaszlo, Backbase, Morfik, or anything else) have a sizeable browser-side code base that has to be downloaded each time an application is accessed.

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I suppose you know both OpenLaszlo and Backbase if you know Morfik or are serious about Web 2.0. The big news is that OpenLaszlo, which was traditionally a Flash-based client, now has (in alpha stage) support for a DHTML runtime. Check out their LZPiX demo — it is awesome (they have it both in Flash and DHTML; for the DHTML version Fireforx 1.5 is required as of this writing).

While Morfik is a complete integrated development environment for web applications (xApps in their parlance) both Backbase and OpenLaszlo are “only” client-side UI toolkits, but very capable ones. Morfik will have to add some eye-candy, too. Hmmm… stay tuned ;-)

I have been developing interactive software for twenty years now and it is encouraging for me to see and experience how all this new Web 2.0 stuff is advancing usability. Of course all these technologies are only tools that can be used for good or wrong, but there are a lot of new applications developed with these tools that are really pleasant and easy to use (KISS, anyone?).