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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One of Morfik’s greatest strengths is rapid application development (RAD). One fundamental aspect of any RAD tool is powerful debugging. In a web environment this is usually much more complex than in a traditional fat client (e.g. Windows-) application. Let’s see how we can get it to work.

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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?).

Due to no coincidence I became aware of another blog just arond the globe that seems to be devoted to Web 2.0 and fond of Morfik too. Mauricio Longo’s New IT Trends already discussed some very current topics and his style (being a technical writer) is very good. Wholeheartedly recommended.